





.U 



AN ETHICAL 
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

PRESENTED IN ITS MAIN OUTLINES 



BOOKS BY FELIX ADLER 


An Ethical Philosophy of Life 


The World Crisis and Its Meaning 


Marriage and Divorce 


Life and Destiny 


The Religion of Duty 


The Moral Instruction of Children 



192 



AN ETHICAL 
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

PRESENTED IN ITS MAIN OUTLINES 



BY 

FELIX ADLER 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1918 



f^6^ . ^ ^^^ 



COPTBIGHT, 1918, BT 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



MAY i6 1918 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CI.A499012 



PREFACE 

This book records a philosophy of life growing out of the 
experience of a lifetime. The convictions put in it are not dog- 
matic, for dogma is the conviction of one man imposed author- 
itatively upon others. The convictions herein expounded are 
submitted to those who search, as the writer has searched, for 
light on the problems of life, in order that they may compare 
their experience with his, and their interpretations of their ex- 
perience with his interpretation.^ 

It is a great hope that some of the readers of this book may 
find the general world-view expounded congenial, and for them 
also real and true. It is believed that others may find the 
practical suggestions as to the conduct of life in which the 
theory issues helpful in part, if not in whole, as many of us 
accept from the teachings of the Stoics, or of other thinkers, 
practical precepts, without on that accoimt adopting the 
philosophy from which these precepts are derived. 

The book is divided into four parts: the first an autobi- 
ographical introduction describing the various stations on the 
road by which the author arrived at his present position, and 
offering incidental appreciations and appraisements of the 
Hebrew religion, of Emerson, of the ethics of the Gospels, of 
Socialism and of other social reform movements. 

The second part expounds the philosophical theory. 

The third part contains the applications of the theory to the 
more strictly personal life, under the captions of the Three 

^ In view of the writer's connection with the Ethical Culture So- 
cieties it is fitting to state expressly that the philosophical positions 
herein set forth are not to be taken as an official pronouncement on 
behalf of the Ethical Culture Movement. The Ethical Societies as 
such have no official philosophy. See Book IV, Chapter 9« 

V 



vi PREFACE 

Shadows of Sickness, Sorrow and Sin, and also to the principal 
so-called Rights to Life, Property, Reputation. 

The fourth part applies the theory to the social institutions, 
to the Family, the Vocation, the State, the International So- 
ciety, and the Church, these institutions being considered as an 
expanding series through which the individual is to pass on his 
pilgrimage in the direction of the supreme spiritual end. 

The principal problems considered are: 

1. How to establish the fundamental ethical dictum that 
every human being ought to count, and is intrinsically worth 
while. This dictum has been denied by many of the greatest 
thinkers, who assert the intrinsic inferiority of some men, the 
intrinsic superiority of others. The practice of the world also 
runs most distinctly contrary to it. How then is it to be 
validated? 

2. The problem of how to attach a precise meaning to the 
term "spiritual," thereby divesting it of the flavor of sentimen- 
tality and vagueness that attaches to it. 

3. How to link up the world's activities in science, art, 
politics, business, to the supreme ethical end. 

4. How to lay foundations whereon to erect the convic- 
tion that there verily is a supersensible reality. 

For the repetitions that occur throughout the volume in- 
dulgence is requested. In presenting an unfamiliar system of 
thought they may sometimes assist the reader in retaining the 
thread. 

The work is conceived as a whole, and should be read through 
before any part of it is more minutely examined. The theory 
of' Part II especially should be read in the light of the appli- 
cations submitted in Parts III and IV. 



CONTENTS 

BOOK I 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Prelude . ........ 3 

II. The Hebrew Religion 14 

III. Emerson 27 

IV. The Teachings op Jesus . . . . . ,30 
V. Social Reform 43 

VI. The Influence of My Vocation on Inner Devel^ 

OPMENT . 58 

BOOK II 

PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 

I. Introductory Remarks: Critique of Kant . . 73 
II. Critique of Kant (Continued) . . . .82 

III. Preliminary Remarks on Worth^ and on the Rea- 

sons Why the Method Employed by Ethics 
Must Be the Opposite of That Employed by 
the Physical Sciences 91 

IV. The Ideal of the Whole 100 

V. The Ideal of the Whole and the Ethical Mani- 
fold 114 

VI. The Ideal of the Spiritual Universe and the God- 
Ideal . . . 125 

BOOK III 

APPLICATIONS: THE THREE SHADOWS, SICKNESS, 

SORROW AND SIN, AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE, 

PROPERTY AND REPUTATION 

I. Introduction 147 

II. The Three Shadows: Sickness, Sorrow, Sin . .154 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III. Bereavement 162 

IV. The Shadow of Sin .171 

V. The Spiritual Attitude to be Observed towards 

Fellow-Men in General, Irrespective of the 

Special Relations Which Connect Us More 

Closely with Some than Others . . .179 

VI. The Meaning of Forgiveness .... 202 

VII. The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act so as to Elicit 

THE Best in Others and Thereby in Thyself 208 
VIII. The Supreme Ethical Rule (Continued) . . 220 
IX. How TO Learn to See the Spiritual Numen in 

Others 223 

BOOK IV 

APPLICATIONS: THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY, THE 
STATE, THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, ETC. 

I. The Collective Task of Mankind and the Three- 
fold Reverence ...... 241 

II. The Family 249 

III. The Vocations . 260 

IV. The Practical Vocations 270 

V. The Vocation of the Artist: Outline of a Theory 

of the Relation of Art to Ethics « . . "277 
VI. Educational Vocations, or Vocations Connected 

with the State ...... 289 

VII. The State 305 

VIII. The National Character Spiritually Trans- 
formed: THE International Society, or the 
Organization of Mankind .... 324 
IX. Religious Fellowship as the Culminating Social 

Institution 341 

X. The Last Outlook on Life 354 

APPENDIX 

Appendix I: Spiritual Self-Discipline . . . ^ 365 
Appendix II: The Exercise of Force in the Interest op 

Freedom 369 

INDEX . . ........ 875 



BOOK I 
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION 



CHAPTER I 

PRELUDE 

What this book offers is a system of thought and of 
points of view as to conduct, as these have jointly 
grown out of personal experience. It will be useful to 
introduce them with an autobiographical statement. 
The ideas which follow are such as have been found by 
me, the author, to be fruitful. Certainly I claim for 
them objectivity; but I do so because of what I have 
found them to mean in my own life. He who has been 
scorched by lightning knows that the effects of the 
lightning will be felt by all who are exposed to the same 
experience. I narrate my experience; let others compare 
with it theirs. 

There is, however, a serious, and most embarrassing 
difficulty in the way of discussing the phases and vicissi- 
tudes of one's ethical development. Self -appraisement 
is necessarily involved in the narration. The outstand- 
ing subject of ethics is the self and its relations. The 
physicist, the chemist, the biologist, however the meth- 
ods they use may differ in other respects, agree in the 
endeavor to eliminate the personal equation. The psy- 
chologist likewise does his best to see the procession 
that moves across the inner stage like an interested but 
detached spectator. In the case of ethics, however, the 
personal factor cannot be eliminated, because the per- 

3 



4 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

sonal factor is just the Alpha and the Omega of the 
whole matter; and if this be left out of account, the 
very object to be studied disappears. 

Ethical standards are exacting, separated often from 
performance by the widest interval. To set up a stand- 
ard, therefore, is to reflect upon oneself, to expose one- 
self to the backstroke of one's own deliverances, to be 
plunged perhaps into deep pits of self-humiliation. 
How shall anyone have the courage to face so search- 
ing a test, or the hardihood to discuss with a lofty air, 
and to recommend to others ideals of conduct against 
which he knows that he daily offends? How can anyone 
teach ethics or write about it? The words of the Sermon 
on the Mount, "Judge not that ye be not judged," 
seem to apply very closely. Do not judge others, do 
not lay down the law for others, because in so doing 
you will be judged in the inner forum, becoming a re- 
pulsive object in your own eyes, or standing forth a 
whited sepulcher. In brief, to touch the subject of ethics 
is to handle a knife that cuts both ways, to cast a weapon 
which returns upon him who sends it. 

The difficulty then which confronts the ethical writer 
is that the attitude of detachment possible in other 
branches of investigation is found to be impossible when 
one attempts to sound the profundities of that kind of 
inner experience which is called ethical. The self ob- 
trudes itself at every point, and it instinctively refuses 
to be humbled. What may be denominated the strug- 
gle for self-esteem has indeed played a leading role 
both in the outer and inner history of mankind. This 
struggle, whose immense importance is often overlooked. 



PRELUDE 5 

accounts for even more interesting facts than the bio- 
logical struggle for existence. The desire to exercise 
power over others, often ruthless in the means adopted, 
is frequently nothing more than a miserable attempt to 
save self-esteem by covering up the inner sense of the 
weakness of the self. But the same struggle penetrates 
also into the realm of theoretical ethics with which we are 
concerned. Here it tampers with the standards which 
mortify self-esteem, by inventing such ethical theories as 
seem to make the problems of personality easy of solu- 
tion, and by blinking the tragic facts of guilt, remorse, 
etc. Various ethical systems that are in vogue at the 
present time are, at least in part, exemplars of this 
process — the theory for instance that ethics is nothing 
more than a calculus of self-interest, or a matter of sym- 
pathetic feeling, or a balancing of the more refined 
against the grosser pleasures. The instinct of self-pres- 
ervation, in the shape of the preservation of self-esteem, 
is quite incorrigible, and against its insidious suggestion 
we have reason to be particularly on our guard in the 
discussion which we are entering. 

Are we then to refrain, out of sheer regard for de- 
cency, from touching on this subject at all? Is every- 
one who writes on ethics, or attempts to teach it, either 
a pedant or a hypocrite? But we cannot avoid dis- 
cussing it, nor resist the impulse to teach and write 
about it, for it is the subject on which more than any 
other we and others sorely need help and enlightenment. 
And we shall get help in the endeavor to afford it to 
others. This, then, is my position: I do not presume 
to lay down the law for anyone. I find that I can set 



6 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

forth the better standards which in the course of trial 
and error I have come to recognize. I would not 
shamelessly expose mere private failures and failings 
after the manner of Rousseau in the "Confessions"; 
for there is a tract of the inner life which ought to be 
kept from publicity and prying intrusion. I shall then 
deal with deflections only in so far as they can be traced 
to false standards or principles, and as they tend to 
illustrate the flaw in those standards and principles. 

What I state as certain is certain for me. It has 
approved itself as such in my experience. Let others 
consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with 
that which is here set forth. A distinction, however, 
I wish to call attention to between the the theory as ex- 
pounded in the second part of this volume, and the 
practical applications to be found in the third and 
fourth parts. Persons who are not trained in meta- 
physical thinking or interested in it, may do well to 
omit the reading of the second part. To those who are 
competent in philosophical thinking, and who disagree 
with the positions there taken, I may perhaps be per- 
mitted to suggest that one can dissent from a philosophy 
and yet find help in the applications to which it leads. 
And, after all, it is the practice that counts. 

With these preliminaries, I now proceed to delineate 
briefly the stages of inner development which have led 
me slowly and with much labor to the system of thought 
described in the following pages. 

One of the leading principles to which I early gave 
assent, and to which I have ever since adhered as a 
correct fundamental insight, is expressed in the state- 



PRELUDE 1 

ment that every human being is an end per se, worth 
while on his own account. ^ 

Every human personality is to be safe against in- 
fringement and is, in this sense, sacred. There is a 
certain precinct which may not be invaded. The ex- 
perience which served me especially as the matrix of 
this idea was the adolescent experience of sex-life, — 
the necessity felt of inhibiting, out of reverence for the 
personality of women, the powerful instincts then 
awakened.^ 

The fact that I had lived abroad for three years in 
frequent contact with young men, especially students, 
who derided my scruples, and in the impure atmosphere 

^ Though I must at once mention the first great error which ac- 
companied the true insight, the shadow which went alongside of the 
light, namely, my understanding of the above principle mainly in a 
negative sense. My ethics was largely what may be called non- 
violation ethics. 

^ The relation of chastity to the birth of the idea of personality 
among the Hebrews I have touched upon elsewhere. The Hebrew 
people abhorred promiscuity, or the dishonoring of oneself by indis- 
criminate mingling. It is instructive that this did not stand in the 
way of polygamy. Those persons whom the Hebrew received, so 
to speak, into the sphere of his personality, did not imperil his 
sense of personal intactness, And personal intactness seems to have 
been the determining motive in the severe attitude taken toward 
prostitution. The fact that the worship of other gods, the worst 
of crimes in the eyes of the Hebrew legislator, was described as 
"whoring after other gods" is particularly significant. The sacred, 
sensitive self, the holy thing whatever it might be, which the Hebrew 
discovered within his own sex experience, was thereafter attributed 
also to others, and especially to those who had the same aversion to 
promiscuity as he. Hence perhaps the limited ascription of holiness 
to members of the Hebrew people. 



8 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of three capital cities of Europe, Berlin, Paris and 
Vienna, where the "primrose path" is easy, tended to 
make the retention of my point of view more difficult, 
and at the same time to give it greater fixity, also to 
drive me into a kind of inward solitude. I felt my- 
self in opposition to my surroundings, and acquired a 
confidence, perhaps exaggerated, to persevere along my 
own lines against prevailing tendencies. 

I ought next to mention the decay of theism which 
took place in my mind in consequence of philosophic 
reading. Already at an early age I had stumbled over 
the doctrine of Creation. I remember asking my Sun- 
day School teacher — How is creation possible? How 
can something originate out of nothing? The answer 
I received was evasive, and left me uneasy and un- 
satisfied. On another occasion I ventured to suggest to 
the same authority — a revered and beloved authority — 
that the conception of God seemed to me too much like 
that of a man, too much fashioned on the human model ; 
and he amazed me beyond words by replying that he 
himself sympathized more or less with the ideas of 
Spinoza. This chance remark set me thinking, and 
seemed to open wide spaces in which my mind felt free 
to travel — though I never tended in the direction of 
Spinoza.^ 

My thoughts were driven still further by reaction 

^ Pantheism has always seemed to me the least satisfactory of 
theological or ethical solutions. The system of thought which will 
be found later on in this volume may have a certain superficial 
resemblance to Pantheism, but in reality is as far from it in origin 
and purpose as pole from pole. 



PRELUDE 9 

against the narrow theology of the lectures on Chris- 
tian Evidences as taught at that time in Columbia Col- 
lege, where I was a student. And all these influences 
came to a head in the atmosphere of the German uni- 
versity at Berlin. There I heard Zeller, Duhring, 
Steinthal, Bonitz. Above all I came into contact with 
Herman Cohen, subsequently and for many years pro- 
fessor of philosophy at the University of Marburg, and 
undertook to grapple in grim earnest with the philos- 
ophy of Immanuel Kant. The net outcome was not 
atheism in the moral sense, — I have never been what is 
called an atheist, — but the definite and permanent dis- 
appearance of the individualistic conception of Deity. 
I was attracted by the rigor, the sublimity, of Kant's 
system, and especially by his transcendental derivation 
of the moral law. The individualistic basis of his 
ethics, which is quite uncongenial to me, I ignored, and 
for a time simply accounted myself a follower of 
Kant. Very often since then I have discovered that 
men, unbeknown to themselves, are apt to sail under 
false flags, ranking themselves Kantians, Socialists, 
or what not, because the system to which they give 
their adherence attracts them at some one outstanding 
point, the point namely, where it sharply conflicts with 
views which they themselves strongly reprobate; and 
they are thus led to overlook other features no less 
important in which the system is really uncongenial 
to them. Thus a person who recognizes the evils of 
the present wage system may label himself a Social- 
ist, simply because Socialism is most in evidence as an 



10 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

adversary of the wage systeniy while he may by no 
means agree with the positive principles that underlie 
Socialism, when he comes to examine them dispassion- 
ately. 

I thought at that time of the Moral Law as that 
which answers to or should replace the individualistic 
God-idea. I believed in an unknown principle or power 
in things of which the Moral Law is the manifestation, 
and I found the evidence of the moral law in man's 
consciousness. Matthew Arnold's "the power that, 
makes for righteousness" is a phrase which at that time 
would have suited me, — though perhaps not entirely 
even at that time. I have since come to see that ''mak- 
ing for righteousness" is a conception inapplicable to 
the ultimate reality, and is properly applied only to hu- 
man effort ; since purpose implies that the end sought has 
not as yet been realized, and non-realization and ulti- 
mate reality are contradictory ideas. The power that 
only makes for righteousness cannot be the ultimate 
truth in things. The utmost we can say is that the 
ultimate reality expresses itself in the human world 
as the power that inspires in men moral purpose. 

To return to my personal experiences, there fell into 
my hands, while still a student abroad, a book by Fried- 
rich Albert Lange entitled Die Arheiterfrage (The 
Labor Question), which proved epoch-making in my 
life. Bacon says in his essay Of Studies: "Some books 
are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to 
be chewed and digested." He might have added that 
there are books that make a man over, changing the cur- 



PRELUDE 11 

rent of his existence, or at least opening channels which 
previously had been blocked/ 

Die Arbeit erf rage is not a great book. In the 
literature of the subject it has long since been super- 
seded. Yet it opened for me a wide and tragic pros- 
pect, an outlook of which I had been until then in 
great measure oblivious, an outlook on all the moral 
as well as economic issues involved in what is called 
the Labor Question. My teacher in philosophy, Cohen, 
once said to me sharply, that if there is to be anything 
like religion in the world hereafter, Socialism must be 
the expression of it. I did not agree with his state- 
ment that Socialism spells religion, and have not seen 
my way to this day toward identifying the two. But 
I realized that there was a measure of truth in what 
he said, — and that I must square myself with the issues 
that Socialism raises. Lange helped me to do this. 

He aided me in other respects as well. His History 
of Materialism dispelled some of the fictitious glamor 
that still hung about the materialistic hypothesis at 
that time, — though the last chapter on the ultimate 

* There are also passages in books that have the same revolution- 
izing effect (Cf. the passage quoted from St. Paul in St. Augustine's 
"Confessions"). However^ it is curious to observe that the effect 
brought about may be quite out of proportion to the cause. The 
book or the passage may prove to be of inferior value, so far as its 
subject is concerned, and may yet serve suddenly to call attention 
to the subject itself, and give rise to trains of thought that even- 
tually go far beyond the impetus that set them in motion. "Ripe- 
ness," says Shakespeare, "is everything," — ripeness to receive the 
impetus. Relatedness to the state of mind of the recipient is the 
decisive factor, and this accounts for the astounding changes that 
result. 



12 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

philosophy of life, in which he identifies religion with 
poetry, is distinctly weak. I read his book on the Labor 
Question with burning cheeks; no work of fiction ever 
excited me as did this little treatise. It was ethical 
in spirit, if not in its ruling ideas. It favored produc- 
tive co-operation, and seemed to point a way to im- 
mediate action, as Socialism did not. 

The upshot of it was that I now possessed a second 
object, namely, the laborer, to whom I could apply my 
non-violation ethics. I had always felt an instinctive, 
idealizing reverence for women, and this had its in- 
fluence in the first practical outcome of the philosophy 
of life with which I started on my career. I would go 
out as the minister of a new religious evangel. Instead 
of preaching the individual God, I was to stir men 
up to enact the Moral Law; and to enact the Moral 
Law meant at that time primarily to influence the 
young men with whom I came into contact to reverence 
womanhood, and to keep inviolate the sacred thing, 
woman's honor. And now I had a second arrow in 
my quiver. I was to go out to help to arouse the 
conscience of the wealthy, the advantaged, the educated 
classes, to a sense of their guilt in violating the human 
personality of the laborer. My mother had often sent 
me as a child on errands of charity, and had always 
impressed upon me the duty of respecting the dignity 
of the poor while ministering sympathetically to their 
needs. I was prepared by this youthful training to 
resent the indignity offered to the personality of the 
laborer, as well as the suffering endured by him in 
consequence of existing conditions. 



PRELUDE 13 

Accordingly, on returning from abroad, my first 
action consisted in founding among men of my own 
or nearly my own age a little society which we am- 
bitiously called a Union for the Higher Life, based 
on three tacit assumptions: sex purity, the principle 
of devoting the surplus of one's income beyond that 
required for one's own genuine needs to the elevation 
of the working class, and thirdly, continued intellec- 
tual development. A second practical enterprise at- 
tempted was the establishment of a co-operative print- 
ing shop. This having failed because of the selfish- 
ness actuating the members, the Workingman's School 
was founded, with the avowed object of creating a 
truly co-operative spirit among workingmen. 

I must, however, pause at this point to explain how 
the development described led me to separation from 
the Hebrew religion, the religion in which I was born, 
and to the service of which as a Jewish minister it was 
expected that I should devote my life. 



CHAPTER II 

THE HEBREW RELIGION 

The separation was not violent. There was no sud- 
den wrenching off. There were none of those pain- 
ful struggles which many others have had to under- 
go when breaking away from the faith of their fathers. 
It was all a gradual, smooth transition, the unfolding 
of a seed that had long been planted. I have never 
felt the bitterness often characteristic of the radical, 
nor his vengeful impulse to retaliate upon those who 
had imposed the yoke of dogmas upon his soul. I 
had never worn the yoke. I had never been in bond- 
age. I had been gently guided. And consequently 
the wine did not turn into vinegar, the love into hate. 
The truth is, I was hardly aware of the change that had 
taken place until it was fairly consummated. One day 
I awoke, and found that I had traveled into a new 
country. The landscape was different; the faces I en- 
countered were different; and looking casually into a 
mental mirror, as it were, I perceived that I too had 
become different. And I was sure also that I had 
gained, not lost, that into my new spiritual home I 
had taken with me, not indeed the images of my gods, 
like ^neas, fleeing from Troy, but something for which 
those images had stood, and which in other ways would 
remain for me a permanent possession. 

14 



THE HEBREW RELIGION 15 

It has been said that the science of today lives only 
in so far as it supersedes the science of yesterday. 
Whatever may be true of science (and the statement is 
certainly not true without large qualifications — the 
science of Newton and Darwin has not been "super- 
seded" — and it may even come to pass that outreachings 
of a more ancient science frustrated at the time will 
hereafter be taken up anew with fairer results than 
formerly were attainable), in religion at all events there 
is no such thing as the bare substitution of the new for 
the old. The religions of the past, at least the more 
advanced religions, are not simply to be cast on the 
scrap heap, or treated as exploded superstitions. There 
is in all of them a certain fund of truth which may not 
be allowed to perish, but should be rescued out of the 
wreck. 

On the other hand, even the most advanced religions 
contain a large admixture of error, survivals of primi- 
tive taboos, mythological elements having their root in 
polytheism, while the very truths which I have just ad- 
mitted to be infinitely precious require to be restated 
so as to fit them into a larger synthesis. 

It is not easy to define my attitude toward the Old 
Masters, I mean the Old Masters in religion, the in- 
comparably great religious teachers of the past, who 
tower above us like giants. My attitude is one of pro- 
foundest reverence — toward the Hebrew prophets and 
Jesus especially. The Hebrew religion first sounded 
the distinctively spiritual note. Zoroaster had em- 
phasized the struggle of the powers of Jjight and the 
powers of Darkness, but the conception of light in his 



16 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

system remained to a considerable extent materialis- 
tic. Buddha emphasized Enlightenment in the sense 
of escape from Illusion, and in conjunction with it 
sympathy for all who remain under the spell of illusion. 
Confucius endeavored to walk, and taught his followers 
to walk, with equipoise in the Middle Path; he em- 
phasized what he thought to be the cosmic principle 
of balance or equilibrium. Plato, taking his stand on 
the highest terrestrial platform, caught, or believed him- 
self to have caught, sight of transcendental beauty as 
the ultimate principle in things. But the prophets of 
Israel assigned to the ethical principle the highest rank 
in man's life and in the world at large. The best thing 
in man, they declared, is his moral personality; and the 
best thing in the world, the supreme and controlling 
principle, is the moral power that pervades it. 

The predominance of the ethical principle in religion 
dates from the prophets of Israel. The religious de- 
velopment of the human race took a new turn in their 
sublime predications, and I for one am certainly con- 
scious of having drawn my first draught of moral in- 
spiration from their writings. ^ 

But nevertheless I found myself compelled to 
separate from the religion of Israel. Now why was 

^ I still go back to that fountain-head for refreshment and in- 
spiration, much as a modern poet may go back to Homer, without 
attempting to copy him, or as a modern sculptor or architect may go 
back to the Greek artists without relinquishing his right and his duty 
to help in producing a different kind of art, which perchance may 
one day culminate in masterpieces like theirs, though his own per- 
formance be but the poor beginning. 



THE HEBREW RELIGION 17 

it necessary for me to take this step? Why not con- 
tinue along the path first blazed by the Hebrew proph- 
ets — smoothing it perhaps and widening it? Why not 
separate the dross from the gold, the error from the 
truth, explicating what is implicit in that truth, and 
adapting it to the needs and conditions of the modern 
age? The answer is that the truth contained in the 
Hebrew, and as I shall presently show, in the Chris- 
tian religion, is not capable of such adaptation. It 
claims finality. I have mentioned that there is an ele- 
ment of permanent value in both the Hebrew and the 
Christian religion, and that it should be restated and 
fitted into a larger synthesis. But this is impossible un- 
less the Hebrew or Christian setting be broken, unless 
the element to be preserved is taken out of its context, 
and treated freshly and with perfect freedom. A re- 
ligion like the two I am concerned with is a determinate 
thing. It is a closed circle of thoughts and beliefs. It is 
capable of a certain degree of change but not of indefi- 
nite change. The limits of change are determined by its 
leading conceptions — the monotheistic idea in the one 
case, and the centrality of the figure of Christ in the 
other. Abandon these, and the boundaries by which the 
religion is circumscribed are passed. 

The great religious teachers are men who see the 
spiritual landscape from a certain point of view, in- 
cluding whatever is visible from their station, excluding 
whatever is not. The religion which they originate is 
thus both inclusive and sharply exclusive. What they 
see with their rapt eyes they describe with a trenchancy 



18 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and fitness never thereafter to be equaled.^ But in 
order to progress in religion it is necessary to advance 
toward a different station, to reach a different, a higher 
eminence, and from that to look forth anew upon the 
spiritual landscape, comprehending the outlook of one's 
predecessors in a new perspective, seeing what they saw 
and much besides. 

Religious growth may also be compared to the growth 
of a tree. To expect that development shall continue 
along the Hebrew or Christian lines is like expecting 
that a tree will continue to develop along one of its 
branches. There is a limit beyond which the exten- 
sion of a branch cannot go. Then growth must show 
itself in the putting forth of a new branch. 

But let me now state with somewhat greater partic- 
ularity the reasons that compelled me to depart from 
the faith of Israel, and to leave my early religious 
home, cherishing pious memories of it, but nevertheless 
firmly set in my course towards new horizons.^ 

^ Compare the ej aculatory deliverance of Isaiah, the Sermon on 
the Mount, and the Parables of Jesus. W^ho can attempt in lan- 
guage to express what they saw as they did? 

^ No seriously religious person will attempt to strike out into a new 
path unless he be under inward coercion to do so. The advantages 
of what is commonly called historic continuity (I have just shown 
wherein real continuity consists, that of growth along the trunk, 
and not of growth along the branch) are great. There is for one 
thing the support derived from leaning on an ancient tradition, the 
proud humility felt in passing on the torch that had been held hy 
mighty predecessors, the self-dedication to that which is larger than 
self, i. e., to an institution and ideas that existed in the world before 
one was born, and will exist after one is gone. There is the strength 
drawn from contact with a large and powerful organization, power- 



THE HEBREW RELIGION 19 

1. The difficulty created by the claim that Israel is 
an elect people, that it stands in a peculiar relation to 
the Deity. This claim, at the time when it was put 
forth, was neither arrogant nor unfounded. It was 
not arrogant because the mission was understood to be 
a heavy burden not a privilege : or if a privilege at all, 
then the tragic privilege of martyrdom, a martyrdom 
continued through generations. And the claim was not 
unfounded or preposterous at the time when it was 
put forth because the Hebrews were in reality the only 
people who conceived of morality in terms of holiness. 
It was not absurd for them to assert their mission to 
be the teachers of mankind in respect to the spiritual 
interpretation of morality, since there was something, 
and that something infinitely important, which they ac- 
tually had to teach. Moral thinking and moral practices 
of course had existed from immemorial times everywhere, 
but the conception of morality as divine in its source, as 
spiritual in its inmost essence, — this immense idea was 
the offspring of the Hebrew mind. On the other hand, 
I asked myself, has not the task of Israel in this re- 
spect been accomplished? Have not its Scriptures be- 

f ul both in sustaining one's efforts, and in restraining and correcting 
them when need be. There are, on the other side, the perils of inno- 
vation, the errors into which one is led for lack of restraint and 
correction, the too great dependence on self, the spiritual loneliness 
and the lack of many gracious and useful aids to the religious life 
such as a noble ritual, majestic music, the fit emotional expressions 
of religious feeling, which are not to be had for the asking, the fine 
embellishments that are precious in their way, and that, like the 
fruits in the Gardens of the Gods, ripen slowly, and may not be 
extemporized or anticipated. 



20 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

come the common property of the civilized nations? 
And does not that teacher mistake his office who at- 
tempts to maintain his magisterial authority after his 
pupils have come to man's estate, and are capable of 
original contributions? The "nations" are not to be 
looked upon in the light of mere pupils. The ethical 
message of Israel so far as it is sane is universalistic. 
It is founded on the conviction that there is a moral 
nature in every human being, and that the moral 
nature is a spiritual nature. And if this be so, then 
the utterances, the insights, the new visions with which 
the spiritual nature is pregnant, cannot be supposed 
to be restricted to members of the Jewish people. If 
the teaching function is to be maintained it must be 
exercised by all who have the gift. If there is to be 
an elect body (a dangerous conception, the meaning of 
which is to be carefully defined), it must consist of 
gentiles and Jews, of men of every race and condition 
in whom the spiritual nature is more awakened than 
in others, peculiarly vivid, pressing towards utterance. 
2. Aside from the spiritual interpretation of moral- 
ity, the mission of the Jewish people has been said to 
consist in holding aloft the standard of pure monothe- 
ism as against trinitarianism. But pure monotheism is 
a philosophy rather than a religion. Taken by itself 
it is too pure, too empty of content to serve the pur- 
poses of a living faith. The attributes of omniscience, 
omnipotence, etc., ascribed to Deity are highly abstract, 
too abstruse to be even thinkable, save indirectly, and 
they certainly fail to touch the heart. As a matter 
of fact it was the image of the Father projected upon 



THE HEBREW RELIGION 21 

the background of these abstractions, that made the 
object of Jewish piety. Jahweh is the heavenly 
spouse ; Israel is to be his faithful earthly spouse. The 
Children of Israel are pre-eminently his children. Other 
nations likewise are his children, — some children of 
wrath to be cast out and destroyed like the rebellious 
son in Deuteronomy, others to be eventually gathered 
into the patriarchal household. But this view comes back 
to the same general conception of the relations of Israel 
to other nations which has just been discussed. More- 
over, the Father image, as representing the divine life 
in the world, even when extended so as to include all 
mankind on equal terms, is open to a serious objection.* 
3. If, nevertheless, the Jews have a mission, is it per- 
haps this: to rehabilitate the prophetic ideal of social 

* See Chapter IX on the Religious Society in Part IV of this 
volume. It gives rise to the belief that men as individuals or col- 
lectively are the objects of a special Providence, and that the uni- 
verse is so arranged as to be adapted to man's needs, not to say his 
wishes; whereas the facts show that man must adapt himself to 
the universe, and find his physical safety and his ethical salvation 
in so doing. The belief in the Father who allows not one hair of 
our heads to fall unnoticed raises expectations to which actual 
experience fails to correspond. 

As to the issue between monotheism and trinitarianism, it has 
long since become obsolescent, if not obsolete. The forward-looking 
men and women of our time are absorbed in far other issues — Is the 
mechanical theory propounded by science the ultimate account of 
things } Is the world in which we live a blind machine ? Is man a 
chance product of nature, like the beasts that perish? Not is God 
one in unity or is He a Triune God, but, is there a God at all? Is 
there a supersensible reality? Is religion capable of a new lease of 
life, and of giving a new lease of life to us who now are spiritually 
dead? 



22 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

justice? Is it not social justice that the world is cry- 
ing for today? Were not the prophets of Israel the 
great preachers of righteousness in the sense of social 
justice? Did they not affirm that religion consists in 
justice and in its concomitant mercifulness, but above 
all in justice? Did not Isaiah say: "When ye come 
to tread my courts, who has demanded this of you? 
Go wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil that 
is in your hands. Cease to do evil; learn to do good." 
And later on, ''That ye let the oppressed go free, and 
that ye break every yoke." These are solemn, mar- 
velous words assuredly! They have been ringing down 
through the ages, and still find their echo in our hearts. 
And yet the justice idea of the prophets is inadequate 
to serve the purpose of social reconstruction today. To 
go back to it would mean repristination, not renovation: 
It is sound as far as it goes, but it does not go far 
enough. It is negative, rather than positive ; it is based 
on the idea of non-violation. What we require today 
is a positive conception, and this implies a positive 
definition of that holy thing in man that is to be treated 
as inviolable. To the mind of the prophets justice 
meant chiefly resistance to oppression^ since oppression 
is the most palpable exemplification of the forbidden 
violation. The prophets in their outlook on the ex- 
ternal relations of their people stood for the weak, the 
oppressed, against the strong, the oppressor. They stood 
for their own weak little nation, the Belgium of those 
days, against the two over-mighty empires, Egypt and 
Assyria, that bordered it on either side. In the in- 
ternal affairs of Israel they espoused the cause of the 



THE HEBREW RELIGION 23 

weak against the rich and strong: "Woe unto them 
that add house to house and field to field, that grind 
the faces of the poor." Ever and ever again the same 
note resounds, the same intense, passionately indig- 
nant feeling against violation in the form of oppression. 
But this aspect of justice, as I have said, is the negative 
aspect, — inestimably important, but insufficient. Where 
oppression does not occur, have the claims of justice 
ceased? Is there not something even greater than mere 
non-infringement, greater than mercifulness or kindness, 
which in justice we owe to the personality of our fel- 
lows, namely, to aid in the development of their per- 
sonality? Righteousness, yes, by all means, — ^but does 
the righteousness of the prophets of Israel exhaust or 
begin to exhaust the content of that vast idea? 

The universalistic ethical idea in the Hebrew reli- 
gion is bound up with and bound down by racial re- 
strictions. The issue between monotheism and trini- 
tarianism is no longer a vital issue of our day. The 
Father image as the symbol of Deity raises expecta- 
tions which experience does not confirm. The ideal of 
social justice as conceived by the prophets of Israel is 
a valid but incomplete expression of what is implied 
in social justice. These are weighty considerations 
that make it difficult to retain the belief in the elect 
character attributed to the people of Israel. There is 
one other, of very deep-reaching importance, that must 
be noticed. An elect people is supposed to be an ex- 
emplary people, one that sets a moral example which 
other nations are expected to copy. But it has become 
more and more clear to me that the value of example 



24 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in the moral life has been Overestimated and misunder- 
stood. No individual, for instance, can really serve 
as an example to others so as to be copied by them. 
The circumstances are always somewhat different, the 
natures are different, and the obligations, finely 
examined, are never quite the same. In fact, the best 
that anyone can do for another by his example is 
to stimulate him to express with consummate fidelity his 
different nature in his own different way. I do not 
of course deny that there are certain uniformities, chief- 
ly negative, in moral conduct, but I have come to think 
that the ethical quality of moral acts consists in the 
points in which they differ rather than in those in which 
they agree. The ideally ethical act, to my mind, is the 
most completely individualized act. 

And what is true of individuals is no less true of peo- 
ples. No people can really be exemplary for other 
peoples, and in this sense elect. Every people possesses 
a character of its own to which it is to give expression 
in ways which I shall indicate in the last part of this 
work. But the way rightly adopted by one nation 
cannot be a law or a model for its sister nations. If 
the ideal of the modern Zionists were realized, if the 
Jews were to return to Palestine, to speak once more 
the language of the Bible, to cultivate their distinctive 
gifts, they would not therefore produce a pattern which 
could be copied in Japan, or among the 400 millions 
of China, or in the United States, or among the Slavic 
or Latin peoples. 

In concluding these reflections, I may not conceal 
from myself or from others that the objection to the 



THE HEBREW RELIGION 25 

function of exemplariness, if sustained, affects at the 
root both the theology and the ethics of the past. If no 
individual can be in the strict sense an example to others, 
neither can an individual Deity be an example to be 
copied by men, neither can Christ be the perfect exem- 
plar to be imitated. There can be no single perfect ex- 
emplar. Virtues that bear the same name are not there- 
fore the same virtues. Often it is only the name that is 
the same, not the substance; and where they are in a 
broad way the same, yet there remains a difference of ac- 
cent. The natures of men are unlike. Their moral 
destiny is to work out the unlikeness of each in harmony 
with that of the others. The moral equivalence of men, 
rather than their moral equality, is for me the expres- 
sion of the fundamental moral relation.^ 

At the early stage of my career to which I am still 

^ Of many ethical types of behavior no examples whatever as yet 
exist, for instance, of the ethically-minded employer or merchant, 
ethically-minded in thought and in practice. The standard of eth- 
ical behavior which we apply is at present higher and more exact- 
ing. The standard itself indeed is in process of being defined, and 
there are no illustrations of it, or none but very imperfect ones, 
on which to dwell with satisfaction. But the same is true of other 
vocations. We are very thankful for any examples that can be 
found. They seem to prove that that which ought to be can be. 
But we may not lean on them too hard. They are never quite ade- 
quate, even in their limited sphere ; and there is ever an Ought-to-be 
beyond that which has been even partially realized, beyond that 
which has even as yet been conceived. To make too much of exam- 
ple is to check moral progress. Along with a due appreciation 
of past moral achievements, there should be encouraged a spirit of 
brave adventure, a certain intrepidity of soul to venture forth on 
voyages of discovery into unknown ethical regions, taking the risks 
but bent upon the prize. 



26 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

adverting it was urgently put to me that with all the 
changes that had taken place in my inner life, I need 
not separate myself from the religion of the Fathers, 
nay, that I might remain a servant and teacher of 
religion within the Jewish fold, gradually weaning 
away from the beliefs which they held those whom I 
might contrive to influence, and drawing them up — 
such was the phrase used — to my own "higher level." 
But this advice was repelled by every inmost fibre 
of my being, and could not but be utterly rejected. I 
was to publicly represent a certain belief with the pur- 
pose of undermining it. I was to trade upon the sim- 
plicity of my hearers in order to rob them of what they, 
crudely and mistakenly perhaps, considered their most 
sacred truth, by feigning provisionally, until I could 
alter their views, to be in agreement with them. Would 
this be fair to them or to myself? Was I to act a lie 
in order to teach the truth? There was especially one 
passage in the Sabbath service which brought me to the 
point of resolution: I mean the words spoken by the 
officiating minister as he holds up the Pentateuch scroll, 
"And this is the Law which Moses set before the people 
of Israel." I had lately returned from abroad where 
I had had a fairly thorough course in Biblical exegesis, 
and had become convinced that the Mosaic religion is 
so to speak a religious mosaic, and that there is hardly 
a single stone in it which can with certainty be traced 
to the authorship of Moses. Was I to repeat these 
words? It was impossible. I was certain that they 
would stick in my throat. On these grounds the sep- 
aration was decided on by me, and became irremediable. 



CHAPTER III 

EMERSON 

I FIND on looking backward that my development 
proceeded with the help of a series of definitions fixing 
my attitude toward teachers who made a special ap- 
peal to me, and toward great historic tendencies past and 
present. I was helped both by what I was able to 
appreciate in them, and, where I diverged, by what 
they forced me to think out for myself. Here let me 
acknowledge a passing debt to Emerson. As in the 
case of Kant, a strong attraction drew me toward Em- 
erson with temporary disregard of radical differences, 
— although the spell was never so potent or so persistent 
in the latter instance as in the former. I made Emer- 
son's acquaintance in 1875. I came into touch with 
the Emerson circle and read and re-read the Essays, 
The value of Emerson's teaching to me at that time con- 
sisted in the exalted view he takes of the self. Divinity 
as an object of extraneous worship for me had vanished. 
Emerson taught that immediate experience of the divine 
power in self may take the place of worship. His doc- 
trine of self-reliance also was bracing to a youth just 
setting out to challenge prevailing opinions and to 
urge plans of transformation upon the community in 
which he worked. But I soon discovered that Emerson 
overstresses self-affirmation at the expense of service. 

27 



28 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

For a time indeed I reconciled in my own fashion the two 
contrary tendencies. The divine power, I argued, 
flows through me as a channel — ^hence the grandeur 
which attaches to my spiritual nature. But the divine 
power manifests itself in redressing the wrongs that 
exist in the world, and in putting an end to such viola- 
tions of personality as the sexual and economic ex- 
ploitations which disgrace human society^ So for a 
time I continued to walk on air with Emerson, and had 
my head in the clouds, — the clouds in which Emerson 
enveloped me. 

Out of this false sense of security, this quasi-pantheis- 
tic self-affirmation, the experiences of the next few years 
effectually roused me. I came to see that Emerson's 
pantheism in effect spoils his ethics. Be thyself, he 
says, not a counterfeit or imitation of someone else. 
Be different. But why! Because the One manifests 
itself in endless variety. Penetrating below the surface, 
however, one finds that in this kind of philosophy the 
value of difference, to which I attach essential impor- 
tance on ethical grounds, is nothing more than that 
of a foil. According to Emerson life is a universal 
masquerade, and the interest of the whole business of 
living consists in the ever-renewed discovery that the 
face behind the different masks is still the same. Dif- 
ference is not cherished on its own account. And here, 
as in the case of the uniformity principle of Hebraism, 
I found myself dissenting. 

Emerson is a kind of eagle, circling high up in the 
ether — non soli cedit, 

Emerson with his oracular sayings might have served 



EMERSON 29 

as a priest at Dodona or led the mysteries at Eleusis. 
Yet, withal, he is genuinely American, — a rare blend 
of ancient mystic and modern Yankee, — a valued poet 
too, but as an ethical guide to be accepted only with 
large reservations. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

At about this time I began to occupy myself more 
seriously than I had done before, with the study of the 
New Testament. I had, I think a great advantage in 
my approach to it, for the very reason that I had not 
been brought up in the Christian tradition. I came 
from the outside, with a mind fresh to receive first-hand 
impressions. I had not had instilled into me from 
childhood the kind of hesitant awe that prevents im- 
partial appraisement of excellences and of possible de- 
ficiencies. On the other hand, as a searcher I was 
deeply interested to ascertain what Christianity could 
give me, and to what extent it could further my spirit- 
ual development. I had not the enforcedly apologetic 
attitude; I did not come prepared to accept without 
question nor yet to find fault ; I came to test for my own 
use. Here an? I, with life and its problem before me — 
how can the teachings of Jesus help me in my search, 
in my dire perplexities? 

I must say to begin with that I was particularly 
struck with the originality of Jesus' teachings, a quality 
in them which to my amazement I had found disputed, 
not only by Jews, but by representative Christians. In 
Jewish circles it is not uncommon to speak almost con- 
descendingly of Christianity as of a daughter religion 

30 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 31 

commissioned to spread abroad the truths of Judaism, 
with such alloy as may be needed to suit them to the 
apprehension of the gentiles. But Christian teachers 
likewise — I remember particularly a recent sermon to 
that effect — have taken the ground that Jesus added 
nothing new to the ethical insight of mankind. His 
work, it is said, consisted merely in supplying a suf- 
ficient motive for performing the duties which every- 
one knows, but which, lacking this motive, we are sup- 
posedly impotent to practice. This strange misappre- 
hension of the intimate nature of Jesus' contribution to 
ethical progress is largely due, I take it, to the poverty 
of our moral vocabulary. Language puts at our dis- 
posal only a few terms, such as Justice, Righteousness, 
Love, — ^which must needs stand for a great variety of 
moral ideas. Thus Justice in Plato's use of the word, 
implies that "a shoemaker shall stick to his last," that 
those who perform the humble functions shall be con- 
tent to perform them in due subservience to their supe- 
riors. A very different meaning was attached to justice 
by the Hebrew prophets as I have explained in the last 
chapter. Again, a quite different conception of justice 
is framed and stressed by modern social reformers. 
Now it is this ambiguity of the moral vocabulary that 
conceals the novelty of Jesus' precepts. Thus, to men- 
tion only a single capital instance, it has been asserted 
that the Golden Rule as taught by Jesus is not original, 
but substantially the same rule that had been laid down 
by Confucius 500 years before the time of Jesus. But 
on closer scrutiny it will be seen that the two Golden 
Rules are by no means the same. As propounded by 



32 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the Chinese sage the rule appears to mean: Keep the 
balance true between thyself and thy neighbor; illus- 
trate in thy conduct the principle of equilibrium. As 
impressed upon his disciples by Jesus it means: Look 
upon thy neighbor as thy other self ; act towards him as 
if thou wert he. 

To return to my point, the impression of novelty 
which I received in reading the Gospels was definite and 
striking. The mythological idealization of Jesus, in- 
deed, I put aside as a thing that did not concern me. 
On the other hand, to say with certain modern liberals 
that he was just a man, an infinitely gracious personality, 
one who exemplified in his life the virtues of forgiveness 
and self-sacrifice, did not satisfy me either. Buddha 
too had taught forgiveness: *'For hatred is not con- 
quered by hatred at any time; hatred is conquered by 
love." It could not then be the bare precept of forgive- 
ness that lets light on the secret of Jesus. And self- 
sacrifice — ^" Greater love hath no man than this, that 
he should lay down his life for his friend" — ^had been 
practiced within and without the pale of Hebraism. 

That he continued the work of his Hebrew predeces- 
sors I made no doubt. On the Hebrew side he was a 
prophet, or rather, a saint in Israel. But I had just 
as little doubt that he took a step beyond his predeces- 
sors, that his teachings bear upon them the signature 
of originality. 

To put my thought briefly, I came to conclude that 
the ethical originality of Jesus consists in a new way 
of dealing with the problem of evil, that is, of evil in 
the guise of oppression. The prophets, his predeces- 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 33 

sors, as we have seen, identified injustice with oppres- 
sion; and in the first flush of their moral enthusiasm 
the more optimistic among them believed that justice as 
they conceived of it would presently triumph and that 
oppression would cease altogether — "Arise, shine, for 
thy light is come." God would miraculously interfere, 
and bring about on earth a state of righteousness. But 
years and centuries passed by, and oppression, far from 
ceasing, became under the ruthless administration of 
Rome ever more grinding and terrible. The yoke of 
Rome weighed upon the Jews as it did upon other peo- 
ples ; but perhaps, because they were more independent 
in spirit, it galled them more sorely. The fiery zealots 
among the Jews persisted in hoping that by supreme 
desperate efforts, God coming to their aid, they might 
yet succeed in shaking off this yoke — efforts which cul- 
minated in the horrors of the last siege of Jerusalem. 
Jesus was not of their way of thinking. He seems in- 
deed to have believed that the end of the existing order, 
was near. It was too incredibly bad to last. The 
world would be consumed by fire. A new earth and a 
new heaven would appear. But in the meantime how 
accommodate oneself to the intolerable fact of oppres- 
sion? Jesus said, Resist not evil in the guise of op- 
pression, it is irresistible. He mentions in particular 
three forms of intolerable oppression : a blow in the face, 
the stripping of a man of his garment, and the coercing 
him to do the arbitrary bidding of another. He says. 
Resist not evil, resist not oppression. Shall then evil 
triimiph? Is the victim helplessly at the mercy of the 
injurer? Shall he even be told that in a servile spirit 



34 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

he must accept the indignities that are put upon him? 
No; this is not the meaning. Quite a different mean- 
ing is imphed. And here the teaching of Jesus takes 
its novel turn. There is a way, he says to the victim, in 
which you can spiritually triumph over the evil-doer, 
and make your peace with irresistible oppression. Use 
it as a means of self -purification ; pause to consider what 
the inner motives are that lead your enemy, and others 
like him, to do such acts as they are guilty of, and to 
so violate your personality and that of others. The 
motives in them are lust, greed, anger, wilfulness, pride. 
Now turn your gaze inward upon yourself, look into 
your own heart and learn, perhaps to your amazement, 
that the same evil streams trickle through you ; that you, 
too, are subject, even if it be only subconsciously and in- 
cipiently, to the same appetites, passions, and pride, 
that animate your injurers. Therefore let the sufferings 
you endure at the hands of those who allow these bad 
impulses free rein in their treatment of you lead you 
to expel the same bad impulses that stir potentially in 
your breast; let this experience fill you with a deeper 
horror of the evil, and prove the incentive to secure 
your own emancipation from its control. In this way 
you will achieve a real triumph over your enemy, and 
will be able to make your peace with oppression. There 
are other intolerable evils in the world besides oppres- 
sion which nevertheless must be tolerated. The method 
of Jesus can be applied to these also. This method 
\ I regard as a permanent contribution to the ethical 
progress of humanity. 

A second original trait in Jesus' teaching I found in 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 35 

his conception of the spiritual nature, and of his doc- 
trine of love as dependent on that conception. The 
conception or definition is still negative as in the non-vio- 
lation ethics of the Hebrew prophets. The spiritual 
element in man is hidden. It cannot be apprehended 
as to what it is substantively. The attributes ascribed 
to it are the effects in which it manifests itself; this 
goes without saying. To define the spiritual nature 
means to describe these effects, these manifestations. 
According to the Hebrew predecessors of Jesus the 
spiritual power is to be conceived of as that which 
prompts a man to respect the holy precinct of personal- 
ity in others and in himself. What the holy thing is re- 
mains unknown. This view leads to acts of justice and 
mercy, as above explained. According to Jesus the 
spiritual essence in man bids him expel the inner, impure 
impulses that lead to external violations. In brief, the 
spiritual power is conceived of in terms of purity. It is 
the pure thing in man that thrusts out as alien to itself 
whatever is impure — ^whatever is of the world, the flesh, 
and, in mythological language, whatever is Satanic. In 
this sense I say that the definition is negative. It marks 
out, indeed, a definite line of conduct ; and it even leads, 
as we shall presently see, to active efforts in a specific 
direction, A negative principle may have certain posi- 
tive results. But in the main, nevertheless, the teaching 
of Jesus enlightens us as to what shall not be rather than 
as to what shall be. From the Hebrew prophets we learn 
that there shall not be violation of personality or in- 
justice, the positive concomitant being mercy; from 
Jesus' teachings we learn that there shall not be im- 



36 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

purity in the inner forum, the positive by-product being 
the doctrine of love. 

Taking over the Hebrew heritage, Jesus affirmed 
that the spiritual nature exists in all human beings. 
In every man there is presumed to be this inner power to 
reject the unclean admixtures, to ward off and repel the 
carnal solicitations, to withdraw from the "world," and 
to move upward toward the source of purity, which is 
God. The spirituality of man consisting of purity, the 
Father- God, the Father of Lights, is likewise con- 
ceived as the absolutely pure, in this sense as the most 
holy. In every man there is a ray of the eternal light 
emanating from the eternal luminary, and all men are 
one in so far as their rays converge at the focus of God- 
head. To love men is to be conscious of one's unity 
with them in the central life, and to give effect to this 
consciousness. Hence Christian love, the love that Jesus 
taught, is no earthly love, no mere sentiment, or out- 
reaching of the human affections. On the contrary, the 
natural human ties are repeatedly set aside in the logia. 
To love another is to love him in God. Later the 
current phrase became, to love him in Christ; that is, 
to think of him, and act towards him, as if he possessed 
the same capacity for purity with oneself. 

The love of others in God or Christ encouraged a 
particular kind of earthly beneficence, and it especially 
inspired the followers of Jesus with an unparalleled zeal 
in works of remedial (though never of preventive) char- 
ity. This may at first sight seem paradoxical. The young 
man is advised to dispossess himself of all he has, and 
in the same breath is told to distribute his possessions 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 37 

among the poor. Why not rather scatter them to the 
winds? Why should not the poor too cease to toil and 
spin and take heed for the morrow? For their simple 
necessities God would provide. The two-fold attitude, 
however, is easy to understand if we remember that 
certain acts of helpfulness have a symbolic significance, 
as attesting the value we set upon the person to whose 
needs we minister, much as a flower offered to a be- 
loved person emblematically intimates our sense of the 
beauty and worth of the one to whom the tribute is 
offered. Christian charity, on its earthly side, has a sim- 
ilar meaning and purpose. It is intended to efface 
the indignity to which human beings are subjected 
when reduced to extreme indigence or allowed to suffer 
without relief, for it is the disdain of the spiritual per- 
sonality thus evinced which Jesus disallows. He bids 
his followers intimate by earthly tokens their conscious- 
ness of the super-earthly worth of their fellow-beings. 
But the pursuit of riches as such he nowhere encourages 
— quite the contrary. And it is certainly a mistake to 
represent Jesus, as has recently been done, as a kind of 
precursor of modern Socialism, and to think of him as 
one who, if he had lived in our time, would have laid 
stress on equality of opportunity for all to gain earthly 
possessions. He who advocated wealth for none could 
not be supposed to have sympathized with a social 
movement whose first object it is to secure wealth for 
all. 

It is this interpretation of love that helped me to un- 
derstand the interior meaning of the doctrine of the 
forgiveness of enemies as taught by Jesus, and to per- 



38 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ceive wherein it differs from the apparently identical 
mode of behavior enjoined by Buddha and the Stoic 
Seneca. It plays a capital role in Jesus' teaching. 
As illustrated by the proto-martyr Stephen it probably 
effected the conversion of Paul. Jesus says: "Bless 
them that curse you." But how is it possible to bless 
those that curse us ? How, for instance, was it possible 
for Stephen to bless the men of blood at the very mo- 
ment when they were crushing him under stones? To 
bless them that curse you, to bless them that despitefully 
use you, means to distinguish between the spiritual pos- 
sibilities latent in them and their overt conduct, to see 
the human, the potentially divine face behind the hor- 
rible mask, and to invoke the influence of the divine 
power upon them in order that it may change them into 
their purer, better selves. 

With complete and eager appreciation of the points 
of excellence contained in these teachings, with a rev- 
erence which it is impossible to express in words for 
their incomparable Author, and with a large sense of 
the beneficent influence which they have exercised on 
human history, I still could not avoid the question, so 
vital for me. Have these ethical teachings of the great 
Master the stamp of finality upon them? Has Jesus 
really spoken the last word in ethics? Is nothing left 
for us but further to expand and apply the truth which 
he laid down once and for all? When theology goes, 
the last stand of apologetic writers is apt to be made 
on the ethics. The instinct to claim finality for the 
religion in which one has been brought up asserts itself 
in the claim that the moral teachings at least are un- 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 39 

exceptionable and valid for all time to come. The 
searcher who is in great moral perplexities and who 
seeks help for others and himself, is bound to ask and 
will ask in no captious spirit, is this so? 

The decisive point is whether the ethical teachings of 
Jesus supply a principle which enables us to work with 
zest in the world, to take the keenest interest in all the 
manifold activities of human society, to embrace the 
world with the view of penetrating it with a spiritual 
purpose and of thus transforming it. Do these teach- 
ings exhibit a way of making the world and the flesh 
instrumental to the spirit, or do they serve to turn us 
away from the world and its interests, to abandon the 
world in despair? Is the conception of spirituality as 
purity adequate? Purity is certainly one aspect of 
morahty; is it the sole or the principal factor in it? 
The other-worldly attitude in the Gospels is certainly 
clearly marked. It is the background on which the eth- 
ical precepts stand forth. Tyrrel has argued as against 
Harnack for the close connection between the thought 
of Jesus and the apocalyptic vision. I asked myself, 
Can the apocalyptic vision, that is to say the other- 
worldliness, be dissociated from the ethics, or is the 
relation between them necessary? ^ If the world is 
speedily, almost immediately, coming to an end, then 
it is justifiable to prefer celibacy to marriage, to ignore 
the state, to counsel disregard of the toiling and the 

^ I am aware that a highly esteemed school of modern theologians 
maintain that the apocalyptic element is a secondary and even an 
embarrassing feature for Jesus. But I am unable to convince my- 
self of the justice of this view. 



40 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

spinning. All of this is warranted on the assumption 
that the order of things in which these institutions and 
activities have their place is about to disappear. 

But if this expectation is deceived, if things continue 
in their ancient course, if the world and the flesh persist, 
taking on ever new and more baffling shapes, how is a 
system of ethics which is based on the assumption of one 
state of things to be reconciled with a state of things 
exactly the opposite? How shall an ethical person con- 
duct himself in a world which his philosophy of life 
teaches him to reject, but with which the necessities of 
his existence compel him to come to terms day by day 
and hour by hour? There must then be compromise. 
And the history of Christianity up to the present mo- 
ment is the record of such compromises. Monasticism 
was one of the earliest. A distinction was made, so to 
speak, between perfect and imperfect Christians, be- 
tween a class of men and women who lived in ascetic se- 
clusion, as if the world did not exist, and another class, 
the greater number, who managed ethically as best they 
could, dependent on the supererogatory merits of the 
real Christians or saints to eke out their unholiness. An- 
other species of compromise is illustrated, especially in 
Protestant countries. It appears as a division between 
the contracted sphere of holiness and the circumambient 
sphere of the practical life, in both of which, however, 
the same individual has his place. Chastity, forgiveness 
of personal enemies, and the like virtues are to be prac- 
ticed in the contracted sphere of private life, the ability 
to practice these virtues being derived from mystical 
identification with Jesus. In the Christian's public life 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 41 

no such identification is possible, and he is left to be con- 
sciously or unconsciously unholy. As a politician, as a 
competitor in the struggle for wealth, he remains without 
ethical direction. The ethical ideal of the Gospels re- 
quires for its setting the apocalyptic vision. It derives 
its cogency from the belief that the world is about to 
perish. Can it serve as a sufficient guide to those who 
must live in the world, and affirm their ethical person- 
ality in dealing with it? In politics, in business, in 
science, in art, must we not somehow see our way to the 
conception that these great interests are not alien to the 
spiritual nature, introducing perchance impure admix- 
tures into it, but rather can be made subservient or in- 
strumental to it? Yes; but instrumental in what way? 
At this point, not only the Christian system, but every 
one of the systems of ethics that have arisen since then 
has failed. And it is, moreover, perfectly evident that 
the instrumental function of the sex relation or of the 
pursuit of knowledge or of patriotism cannot be deter- 
mined unless we first answer the one question which the 
ethical writers are in the habit of evading — Instrumental 
to what end? What is the ethical end? Instruments are 
means to ends — how can the means be rightly appraised 
without a definite conception of the end ? And if the end 
be the affirmation of our ethical personality, of our, 
spiritual nature, of that holy thing in us without which 
man loses his worth ( and without which the rule of non- 
violation itself falls to the ground, since where there is 
nothing inviolable there can be no infringement), it i.* 
plain that we must seek a positive definition of the spir- 
itual nature which shall serve as a principle of regulation 



42 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

where the empty concept of purity has manifestly failed. 

Christian ethics has promoted the moral development 
of mankind in a thousand ways. It has helped even by 
its mythological embodiment of a transcendental idea to 
place the individual more firmly on his feet. It has em- 
phasized the inner springs of conduct; it has given 
prominence to certain principal virtues of the private 
life ; but, like every product of the mind and aspirations 
of man, it exhibits the limitations of the time and of the 
social conditions under which it arose. The conditions 
have since changed. Society has become infinitely more 
complex, and in consequence new moral problems have 
forced themselves upon men's attention; and with the 
help of Christianity itself the human race has advanced 
beyond the point of view for which Christianity stands.^ 

Speaking again only for myself I could not assent to 
the position that finality appertains to the ethical teach- 
ings of the Gospel, that they or their Author have 
spoken the last word in ethics. I could not persuade 
myself that this is so because I failed to get from these 
teachings, inestimably precious as they are, an answer 
to the question that most pressed upon me — Instru- 
mental in what sense, instrumental to what end? 

^ See the similes used in the previous chapter on the growth of 
the tree as manifested in the putting forth of a new branch, and 
the ascent of an eminence which includes the part of the spiritual 
landscape previously seen, but also that part which from the pre- 
vious station was excluded. 



CHAPTER V 

SOCIAL REFORM 

My position at that time may be summarized as fol- 
lows; There is a divine power in the world, not individ- 
ual, manifest in the moral law as revealed in human ex- 
perience. The moral law involves recognition of the 
presence of a something holy in each human being. 
Since the world presents innumerable examples of the 
grossest violation of human personality (e.g., prostitu- 
tion and exploitation of laborers), the business immedi- 
ately in hand is to make an end of these violations. 
There was as yet in my mind no positive definition of 
personality. Clarification and further development were 
promoted by the necessity of grappling with the prob- 
lems of poverty and with the attempted solutions of the 
Socialists and of other social reformers. At this period, 
the notion of personality in my mind being still without 
determinate content, empirical matter intruded, and a 
species of millennialism for a time vitiated my thinking. 
In order to set up a goal for humanity, I dallied with 
Utopias, and flattered my imagination with the vision 
of something like a state of ultimate earthly felicity. 
The cheap cry of ''Let us have heaven on earth" was 
also on my lips, though the delusion did not last long 
and perhaps never penetrated very deeply. 

The problem of poverty, as mentioned above, en- 

43 



44 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

grossed me early. I acted as chairman of the meeting 
at which Henry George was first introduced to the 
public in New York City. But Henry George's 
remedy, — a single draught of Socialism with unstinted 
individualism thereafter-^never attracted me, while his 
descriptions of the misery of the poor, eloquent as they 
were, and fitted to awaken persons unacquainted with 
actual conditions, conveyed to me no novel message. I 
had before then been profoundly stirred by the chapters 
in Karl Marx's Kapital in which he collects from the 
English Blue Books frightful evidence of the mistreat- 
ment of laborers and especially of children in the early 
part of the nineteenth century. My errands in the tene- 
ment slums of New York had also made me fairly famil- 
iar with the bitter facts, and throughout my life I have 
been in touch in a practical way with the appalling com- 
plexus of misery and wrong which we abstractly desig- 
nate as the Labor Question. I shall not here take time 
to discuss Socialism or other social reform movements in 
detail. My intention is to sketch a certain philosophy 
of life, and to trace the steps by which I reached it. My 
reaction against Socialism and related movements, how- 
ever, was a prime factor in this inner development ; and 
it is of this reaction and the causes of it that I must 
speak. 

The evils inherent in poverty are, in the first place, 
obviously, the privations entailed by it; secondly, the 
fact that the greater part of the life of the poor is con- 
sumed in efforts to provide the bare necessaries, the 
mind being thus kept in bondage to bodily needs and 
prevented from rising to other interests more appropri- 



SOCIAL REFORM 45 

ate to rational beings; thirdly, the fact that the first 
two wrongs are caused, not wholly it is true, but yet in 
a large measure, by fellow human beings/ The sting 
in poverty is not so much the hardships suffered, as the 
contempt for the manhood of the poor, exhibited by 
their exploiters, — the inequity being thus turned into in- 
iquity. 

ISTow my reaction against Socialism was and is that it 
neglects the third, the moral evil, and stresses only the 
first and second. I am now speaking of Marxian So- 
cialism, with which in its rigid form I early acquainted 
myself. The Marxian Socialist does not deny the pain 
felt in consequence of the inequity, nor the desire of 
those who suffer to become the equals of their masters ; 
but he regards this desire as a fact of nature explicable 
on deterministic grounds, a consequence of improve- 
ment in the technique or tools of industry. He does 
not deny that there are so-called moral ideas, but he 
considers them epiphenomena or by-products of eco- 
nomic development. The tendency toward equilibrium 
of power in human society, termed democracy, is to him 
just a fact and nothing more. The mere desire for it 

^ I say caused, but perhaps not deliberately intended, although 
there are instances of the latter. An act is diabolical when mali- 
ciously designed to inflict a wrong on another; as rape for the pur- 
pose of dishonoring a family. It is cruelly selfish but not fiendish 
when it springs from scorn of others as if they were only fractional 
human beings. The Brahmin's attitude towards the lower castes, 
the attitude of the feudal lord toward the serf, of Shakespeare's 
nobility toward the common citizens, and of some modern theorists 
toward the democratic multitude, are instances in point. In such 
cases the moral sense itself is astray, but there is perhaps no delib- 
erate sinning against the light. 



46 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

apart from the rightness of the desire is the efficient 
cause which leads to social readjustments. But evi- 
dently this account of the matter will be persuasive only 
in case the efficient cause proves to be really efficient, 
that is to say, in case the desire for equilibration is on 
the point of effectuating itself. If it is not, if the desire 
of the masses for power is thwarted, if the realization of 
their hopes is indefinitely postponed, then the founda- 
tions of the theory are undermined. Hence Marxian 
Socialism has been coupled with and depends on a belief 
which is a kind of materialistic parallel of the apocalyp- 
tic vision of Jesus, — the belief that the end of the pres- 
ent world (the world of the wage system) is close at 
hand, only with the difference that the end is to be 
brought about not by divine interference but automati- 
cally by the acquisition of power on the part of the 
masses. 

To me neither hunger nor the bondage of the mind to 
ph3^sical necessities nor the bare fact of inequity seem 
sufficient to justify the demand for social reconstruc- 
tion, apart from moral right. If there be no such thing 
as morality, or if morality be but an epiphenomenon of 
economic conditions, what warrant have the hungry or 
the disadvantaged for complaining? Animals, too, hun- 
ger and sicken. If man be like them a mere chance 
product of nature, why should he not share their fate? 
Let the weak succumb! Surely the bald fact that the 
democratic masses today chafe under the yoke of their 
masters and demand a better state of things, is no more 
a ground of obligation for the former than the tendency 
toward an ultimate equilibrium in nature of which scien- 



SOCIAL REFORM 47 

tists speak can be a ground of obligation. The tendency 
will effectuate itself or not as the acting forces de- 
termine. There is in truth no such thing as obligation 
from this point of view. Then why not fold our arms 
and wait for what will happen? The notion of de- 
mocracy currently held is obnoxious to the same criti- 
cism. Leave out the moral basis in the claim to equity, 
and nothing remains but the brute fact that men, being 
egotists, fret under the exercise of superior power by 
their fellow egotists. But let Nietzsche or some one 
else demonstrate that certain higher values, higher mere- 
ly because subjectively relished as higher, are incompa- 
tible with equilibrium of power, and he will be justified 
at least in his own eyes in scoffing at equality and scourg- 
ing the democratic dogs back to their kennels. No one 
denies that the masses have the desire to be treated as 
the equals of their masters (very inconveniently for the 
latter), but it is quite another matter whether their de- 
sire ought to be gratified. Social reconstruction, in 
other words, must be motivated by other considerations 
than those by which according to Marx the great change 
is to come about. 

I have not stopped to consider whether the Socialistic 
scheme is workable, whether the run of mankind are 
capable of cooperative effort on a large scale without 
the preeminent leadership of master minds; whether 
Socialism, if carried out, would really breed, as it is ex- 
pected to, the sentiment of ideal brotherhood; whether 
the sentiment of brotherhood itself, unless it be rooted in 
the closer family and national ties, is morally sound, 
whether the emotional forces that sweep through and 



48 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

overwhelm large aggregations of men, can be bridled 
and sufficiently enlightened to promote the ends of So- 
cialism. All such questions as these touch the feasibility 
of the ideal proposed; my own reaction was and is 
against the ideal itself. Instead of pronouncing as some 
do that mankind are not yet ripe to carry out so high an 
ideal, I found myself seriously challenging and finally 
rejecting the very ideal on the ground that it is not a 
genuine moral ideal at all. It is ethically spurious, be- 
cause it omits the notion of right and substitutes for it 
that of power. 

A different objection lies against certain modifica- 
tions of Socialism and against many of the social reform 
movements of our time. In these movements the idea 
of personality is not absent as in Marx's theory. The 
inherent dignity of every human being is deeply felt, 
and per contra the indignity of the present condition of 
the greater number. Man is worth while; and for the 
sake of the worth in him, the unfavorable circumstances 
which stifle the promise of his nature are to be changed. 
My objection in this case is that the higher spiritual 
nature of man, or the notion of personality, is left in- 
definite and remains vaguely in the background. It 
supplies indeed the initial motive for practical efforts; 
but the instrumental relation of the goods of life to the 
supreme good is not apprehended positively. And thus 
the door is left open, as we shall presently see, for cor- 
rupting influences to enter in. 

There seems, it is true, at first sight, considerable 
warrant for demanding certain instant reforms without 
troubling about ulterior spiritual ends. We are con- 



SOCIAL REFORM 49 

fronted in modern society with evils which seem to re- 
quire immediate abolition. Exploitation is palpably one 
of them. It is the clearest possible case of trespass on 
personality. Why not then demand respect simply for 
personality in general, without inquiring into the nature 
of personality ? Is it not beyond all question dishonoring 
to human nature that some should be on the verge of 
starvation while others are even themselves injured by 
excessive possessions ; that the energies of children should 
be exhausted by premature toil; that adults should be 
worked like beasts of burden? Why not leave in abey- 
ance the definition of the supreme end, and concentrate 
effort on the removal of these incontestable evils ? 

My answer to this is, in the first place, that we cannot 
gain the best leverage even for these initial reforms 
without a high and defined conception of man as a 
spiritual being. Efforts directed toward improving even 
material conditions are apt to be fluctuating, spasmodic, 
and are ever in danger of dying down, unless material 
improvement is seen in its relation towards something 
else that commands the highest respect — implicit re- 
spect. Sympathy alone is altogether inadequate. It 
often works grave harm; it is notoriously intermittent, 
at one time broadly expansive and then again contract- 
ing upon the nearest objects. Furthermore, we can at 
best sympathize genuinely with only a very limited num- 
ber of persons. If anyone were to open his heart to the 
sufferings of all the millions of human beings at present 
engaged in conflict on the battlefields of Europe; if he 
were to try to realize the indirect consequences of this 
war; if he were to take a still wider sweep and embrace 



50 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in his imagination the populations of India, China, and 
the races of Africa, the effect upon him would be simply- 
paralyzing. The possible effect of one's sympathetic 
action upon this huge volume of human suffering would 
appear so insignificant as to make exertion on his part 
seem quite irrational. We are assisted by sympathy in 
the matter of social reform by the narrowness of our 
horizons; and even within these narrow boundaries the 
efficiency of the motive depends largely upon the tran- 
sciency of the sympathetic mood. Sympathy as a per- 
manent attitude would disintegrate the self.^ 

The second answer is that by ignoring the ultimate 
end we install proximate ends in its place. The reform 
movements of our day abstain from attempting to set 
up an ultimate good. They are content, as they say, 
"to evaluate the tangible goods ready at hand." In con- 
sequence these tangible goods inevitably usurp the place 
of the supreme good. Begin as we may with the high 
notion of personality, we become materialists before we 
have proceeded very far, and we infect the laboring 
masses with our materialism if we omit to define the re- 
lation of proximate ends to the ultimate aim. For re- 
member that the ultimate end is that which prescribes 
the limits within which the nearer aims are to be sanc- 
tioned, — the limit for each being the degree in which it 
conduces toward the highest end. Without a goal set 

^ I have not touched upon the further question to what extent 
we can really compass the happiness, except at rare moments, even 
of a single human being. The altruistic philosophy is apt to con- 
found the removal of manifest evils with positive benefaction. But 
the removal of one kind of evil lets in new kinds ; and wherein then 
consists the gain so far as happiness is concerned? 



SOCIAL REFORM 51 

up, without an explicit conception of its regulative func- 
tion, the proximate ends abound, and are likely to ex- 
pand ad indeflnitum. This is evident, for instance, in 
the case of wealth-getting. The poor have not enough 
wealth, the rich have too much. ''Let us then redress the 
balance by at least securing enough for the poor. The 
necessary limitations we can discuss after they shall have 
at least reached the limit of sufficiency." But we are 
thus kindling the desire for wealth ; and this desire and 
its possible gratifications are boundless. It is in the 
nature of desire to be prolific of new desire, and to aim 
unceasingly at new satisfactions. First, a decent dwell- 
ing, sufiicient food, education for the children, are 
wanted, then luxury, then millions, then multi-millions. 
Secondary motives take the place of primary ones. 
Wealth becomes a token; the satisfactions it gives are 
no longer related to actual wants or needs, but solely to 
a fantastic desire for preeminence. Has not this been 
the actual history of many of those who have risen from 
poverty to great riches ? But the same desires are pres- 
ent, though suppressed, unsatisfied, in the masses, who 
look up to the few with admiration or envy. And sup- 
pressed desires are often even more insidiously poison- 
ing, more contaminating in their effects than satisfied 
desires. 

The psychological fact is that human volition as ex- 
pressed in action is always determined by some end. A 
means is never adopted without there being some object 
or purpose in view. Leave out the ultimate aim and the 
means become themselves the ends. A decent subsist- 
ence should be treated as related to the ultimate end, — 



52 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

a decent living, for example, as a means to fit the worker 
for the duties of fatherhood and citizenship. 

It may again be urged that what has been said is true 
only of the ambitious minority, and that the masses 
would be quite content with a decent subsistence if only 
that much could be assured them. But the prevalence 
of cheap imitations of luxury among the poor points in 
the opposite direction. At least in a democratic com- 
munity, the ambitions of the few are apt to be con- 
tagious. And where this is not the case, as in some of 
the older countries of Europe, a certain sordid Phil- 
istinism is apt to manifest itself. The life of the middle 
class in Europe is without the restless brilliance that 
characterizes the upward-striving class in America, — is 
not daringly but meanly materialistic. Redeeming fea- 
tures are, of course, not wanting, yet how anyone can 
conceive the social ideal as a state of things in which the 
laboring people shall be raised to the level at present 
occupied by the "middle class" is difficult for me to un- 
derstand. Nor is it a sufficient rejoinder to say that the 
present complexion of the middle class, its narrowness 
and Philistinism, are due to isolation from the social 
classes beneath them, and that the broad sentiment of 
universal fellowship and fraternity, when it shall have 
come to prevail, will purify the atmosphere on the middle 
level. I have sufficiently indicated my doubts as to the 
efficiency and soundness of what is called fraternalism. 

In brief, if we are to preserve a man's respect for 
himself as a moral being, we must find a ground on 
which he can maintain his self-esteem apart from the 
material conditions in which he is placed, and in the in- 



SOCIAL REFORM 53 

terval before the desirable material changes can possibly 
be accomplished. This interval is certain to be long. 
The betterment of social conditions is sure to be gradual. 
The slum ought to be abolished immediately, but until it 
goes we must find a reason to respect the man in the 
slums even now, and a reason why he should respect 
himself even now. This reason can only be derived from 
the spiritual nature of man, from the spiritual end for 
which he exists; and on this account, above all others, 
it is indispensable that the spiritual end be defined. 
How painfully social reformers may be led into error 
by slighting this consideration is seen in the readiness 
with which some have subscribed to the amazing opinion 
that the issue between chastity and dishonor for the 
working-girl depends ultimately on the amount of her 
wages. 

There are two fallacies that affect the social reform 
movements of today. The substitution of power for 
right is one. What I venture to call the fallacy of pro- 
visionalism is the second. This is the fallacy of the op- 
portunist movements. ''Lead the laboring classes pro- 
visionally up to the level of sufficiency, or of decent ex- 
istence, and then we shall see." But man does not act 
without ends, and unless we define the ultimate end, we 
give license to the proximate ends. In other words, we 
simply cannot act provisionally. We cannot ignore our 
spiritual nature without offending against it. We may 
start with the idea of serving it, but without explicit 
definition of it we shall presently find ourselves dis- 
graced in all sorts of idolatries. 

What I am trying to show is how I came to perceive 



M AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the inadequacy of the non- violation ethics. Its formula 
is: Admit the existence of personality; do not infringe 
upon it. In your actions for the good of others, try to 
abolish the manifest infringements or violations. Since 
there must be some positive content to the idea of good, 
accept the material or empirical goods as the provisional 
content with the general understanding that they are to 
be instrumental to the higher life but without troubling 
to define exactly how." 

The aberrations to which this view leads on the side 
of action toward others I have pointed out. A word 
now as to the injurious effect on self. Of these the fol- 
lowing are the most important: 

1. The leader in social reform is apt to be regarded 
by his followers and to think of himself as a kind of sav- 
ior. It is his sincere intention to save society from some 
of the glaring evils with which it is afflicted. But if salva- 
tion is sought in the betterment of external conditions, 
the social savior is apt to become the victim of a false 
sense of moral security. He is likely to be off his guard 
at the weak points of his own character, and to fall 
abruptly from high levels into the ditch. 

2. The social reformer who adopts the fallacy of pro- 
visionalism is apt to be absorbed in the mechanical de- 
tails of his work, — the settlement or the municipal re- 
form society, or the charitable association tend to be- 
come highly organized and efficient pieces of machinery. 
But moral idealism declines in proportion as this kind 
of effiiciency increases, — the salt loses its savor. 

3. The social reformer who sets his heart on external 
changes is apt to become impatient to bring about those 



SOCIAL REFORM 55 

changes. For since he attempts to work from without 
inwardly, and not at the same time from within outward- 
ly, he has nothing to show for his pains unless the desired 
outward changes are actually effected. In this way 
may be explained a certain dictatorial manner, a certain 
arbitrariness sometimes observed in social workers of 
whose earnestness and devotion there can be no ques- 
tion, the preposterous outcome being that in attempt- 
ing to carry out plans of reform in a democratic com- 
munity such reformers offend against the very principle 
of democracy by over-riding the personality of others. 

4. The Social reformer who concentrates his attention 
on external changes is apt to be ambitious of large re- 
sults, to measure betterment by statistical standards. 
Though quality be not overlooked, quantity is likely to 
be over-emphasized. ^ 

5. The painful spectacle is sometimes presented of a 
leader in social movements who goes to pieces morally in 
his private relations (becomes a bad father, a worthless 
husband, an unscrupulous sponge on his friends, etc.). 
Absorption in extensive public movements has this dan- 
ger in it that it often tends to make men neglectful of 
the nearer duties. 

Facts of this kind, which came repeatedly under my 
observation in the course of years, drove home to my 
mind the conviction that the provisional method in social 
reform (the method of working for external changes 
without definition of the end) is morally perilous, both 
in its effects on those who are to be benefited, and in its 
reaction on the character of the reformer himself. I 
parted company with opportunism in every one of its 



56 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

forms ; I became more and more imbued with the belief 
that no one can really help others who in the effort to do 
so is not himself morally helped, i.e., whose character is 
not improved in every respect, who does not become a 
better father, husband, citizen, a more upright man irt 
all his relations in and because of his endeavors to bene- 
fit society. I became convinced that the ethical principle 
must run like a golden thread through the whole of a 
man's life, in a word, that social reform unless inspired 
by the spiritual view of it, that is, unless it is made 
tributary to the spiritual, the total end of life, is not 
social reform in any true sense at all.^ 

The fundamental question, therefore, echoed and re- 
echoed with ever intenser insistence : "What then is the 
holy thing in others? What is the supreme end or good 
to which all the lesser goods should be subordinate and 
subservient? And what is the holy thing in me? — for I 

^ To ward off the most serious misunderstanding, I must remind 
every reader of the chapter on Social Reform, as well as on the 
Hebrew religion and on the ethics of the Gospels, that I am nar- 
rating the phases of my own development. I am not attempting to 
do justice to all that is excellent in those great religions and in 
these great social movements; I am trying to show at what points, 
despite those excellences, I myself felt compelled to diverge from 
them, to push beyond them. In regard to Socialism I recognize the 
immense service it has performed in awakening the conscience of 
modern society to the sufferings of the working class. And in point- 
ing out the dangers of opportunism, the fallacy of provisionalism, 
I am speaking of dangers from which I felt that I must escape, not 
casting a slur on the noble personalities that have appeared in the 
field of social reform during my own time and among my friends 
and acquaintances. Such personalities, because of their inbred fine- 
ness, may be immune against tendencies which yet undeniably exist, 
and which therefore require to be explicitly apprehended. 



SOCIAL REFORM 57 

may not spiritually sacrifice myself. My own highest 
good must be achievable in agreement with that of 
others. What definition of the essential end is possible 
that shall reconcile egoism and altruism by transform- 
ing and transcending them? And if there be such end 
thinkable and definable, how establish the applicability 
of this end to empirical man, either in the person of 
others or in my own?" 

I shall have to dwell on this subject at length in the 
sequel. Here at the outset I cannot forbear expressing 
my sense of the obliquities, the folly, the meanness, 
the cruelties which human nature often exhibits on the 
empirical side when dispassionately contemplated. 
That there are also finer traits in people, gleams of 
gold in the quartz, I do not deny. But even in the 
best exemplars of the race the alloy is not wanting. And 
it is an open question how far any human being, if his 
whole make-up and all the circumstances that influenced 
him be considered, can be called predominantly good, 
assuming that goodness is a matter of desert and not of 
chance. How, therefore, a being that to actual, impar- 
tial observation reveals himself as so dubiously worth 
while, can be regarded as possessing the quality of trans- 
cendent worth (which seems to be implied in the idea 
of personality as inviolable and precious) will be the 
starting point of my inquiry into the philosophical first 
principle in the second part of this volume. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE INFLUENCE OF MY VOCATION ON INNER 
DEVELOPMENT 

The present chapter deals with my inner develop- 
ment as I believe it to have been furthered by my con- 
nection with the Society for Ethical Culture. The func- 
tions intrusted to me in this connection were, first, vari- 
ous forms of so-called philanthropic activity. The ef- 
fects of the experience gathered in them has been de- 
scribed in a preceding chapter; they may be summed 
up in the formula: littleness in the external results 
achieved, consciousness of moral danger to self. 

Secondly, the ministerial function of offering "edifi- 
cation" in public addresses to Sunday assemblies, the sol- 
emnizing of marriages, and the conducting of funeral 
services, — ^while in addition a large part of my vocation- 
al life consisted in the building up of an educational in- 
stitution.^ 

The Public Addresses. Edification, or building up, 
as I understood it, involved the profoundly diffkult task 
of supplying a working philosophy of life without trav- 
eling into the field of metaphysics, teaching the prac- 
ticable counterpart of a connected system of thought 
concerning the problems of life, — the system being so 
firmly knit as to make the appropriate feelings and im- 

^ See the published accounts of the Ethical Culture School. 

68 



MY VOCATION 59 

pulses more or less natural to its exponent. In my case, 
not having fallen heir to such a system, the task of edifi- 
cation became doubly difficult. It meant from the be- 
ginning unceasing self-edification, with a view to edify- 
ing others.^ Setting out with a general scheme along 
Kantian lines, I proceeded to fill in the outline in the 
course of my public teachings, with the result that the 
content filled in eventually disrupted the scheme, and 
compelled a thorough-going reconstruction. The Holi- 
ness conception had been my starting point. I never 
gave it up. I was attracted to Kant because he affirmed 
it. I broke with him because he does not make good his 
affirmation. 

I began with Kantianism, which is predominantly in- 
dividualistic, and I found that in dealing with the prob- 
lems of the family, with the labor question, and in the at- 
tempt to reach an ideal of democracy beyond the ma- 
terialistic conception of it which is at present current — 
I was introducing into my initial sketch elements incom- 
patible with individualism, and necessitating formula- 
tion in social terms. And since I retained and stressed 
the notion of personality, I had to seek a way of inter- 
preting the term Social spiritually, as Kant had under- 
taken to interpret the term individual spiritually. I cer- 
tainly could not fall in with Darwinism or other evolu- 
tionary interpretations of sociality, inasmuch as they 

^ The word "edification" as commonly used has a sentimental fla- 
vor. It does not as a rule convey the idea of constructiveness at all. 
It frequently suggests a kind of warm, moist^ semi-tropical atmos- 
phere for the emotions of the hearer to simmer in. But in its gen- 
uine meaning of "building up" it is too valuable a word to lose. 



60 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

all leave out the concept of inviolable personality, the 
indefeasible factor in my ethical thinking. 

These things are here alluded to in order to emphasize 
the influence of the public Sunday addresses delivered 
by me regularly for more than forty years in stimulat- 
ing, I had almost said forcing, my ethical growth. To 
care for anyone else enough to make his problem one's 
own is ever the beginning of one's real ethical develop- 
ment. To care for a group of people in the sense of 
being challenged to suggest to them ideas and ways of 
behavior that shall really be of use to them in the storm 
and stress of life, is the most searching incentive to self- 
development imaginable. It is more powerful than the 
desire to get truth for one's own sake. The closet philos- 
opher may be serious enough in his search for truth, 
and he may succeed in constructing a symmetrical sys- 
tem which at the time seems complete. Will it stand 
wear and tear? Will it in the bitter moments of his life 
hold together? If not, he has failed; but then he only 
is the loser, it is only his ship that has gone down. But 
the situation is different when a company of people ven- 
ture with you on the same voyage, and trust to you as in 
a way their pilot. 

The challenge that comes from the expectant eyes of 
those who are in trouble, of those whose relations to their 
friends or the members of their family have become 
tangled, the challenge that comes from the larger public 
towards which every public speaker has a certain ethical 
duty — all these challenges press home the question: are 
the things that you believe true, so true that you may 
confidently expect them to be confirmed by the experi- 



MY VOCATION 61 

ence of those who in some measure depend upon you? 
Are they genuinely of use? 

There is also another kind of challenge that in a way 
is even more taxing and searching: the silent appeal 
that comes from those who are spiritually dead, from 
those who are sunk in sloth or sensuality, or who waste 
their precious days in the pursuit of trivial, frivolous 
ends, and from the insensitive consciences of the self- 
righteous and the self-complacent. In the Bible we 
read that the prophet Elisha once threw himself on the 
body of a dead child, in order with his own life to kindle 
there the life that seemed extinct. In some such way in 
public addresses, in which it is not the word but the per- 
sonality behind the word that counts, the speaker is 
bound to throw himself body and soul, as it were, upon 
those who are spiritually numbed, and to enhance the life 
within himself in order to stir up life in them. All of 
which means that the task of edifying others involves 
continuous efforts at self-edification. 

The Solemnizing of Marriages. In solemnizing mar- 
riages I had the experience that some of those at which 
I had officiated ended disastrously, — there had been no 
real marriage at all. Though such instances were not 
numerous in my own experience, yet the statistics of di- 
vorce prove that the number of unfortunate marriages in 
this and other countries is very large, and is increasing. 
What are the foundations of a permanent relation such 
as would tend to the development of personality in and 
through marriage? was the question urged upon me. 
Here is a social tie in which two individuals, and later 
the offspring, are combined in the closest propinquity. 



62 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

How can an ethical theory of marriage be reached, that 
is, a theory dependent on the idea of the joint realization 
of the highest end of life by the members of the family 
group ? This ethical theory of marriage will be set forth 
in a subsequent part of this volume. Here I wish again 
to mark the retroactive effect of the function I was 
called upon to exercise in the Ethical Society on the de- 
velopment of theory. The most incisive effect of my 
practical experience, however, was the being compelled 
to encounter the effect of frustration. How reluctant 
is the natural man to face this fact! How he shrinks, 
and puts up screens between his face and the head of 
Medusa! In my earliest marriage addresses I remem- 
ber how I used to describe the relation as one in which 
each of the partners receives the cup of happiness at 
the hands of the other. The second time I performed 
the ceremony, the bride was the only child of excel- 
lent friends, whose life was completely wrapped up 
in their one daughter. She was a charming young 
girl, and the bridegroom was a fine-grained person 
entirely devoted to her. That marriage feast I shall 
never forget. A little less than a year after, the young 
wife having died in child-birth, I was called in to speak 
at her bier. Where, then, was the exchange of happi- 
ness? How suddenly had the house of bliss fallen into 
ruins ! A similar experience that touched me even more 
deeply was that of a friend, the first one among my as- 
sociates who believed with me in the possibility of a re- 
ligious society without a dogmatic creed. The course of 
love in his case had not run smooth. The marriage be- 
tween himself and the lovely young woman he wedded 



MY VOCATION 63 

was the happy cuhnination of many trials, a haven of 
peace after storms. Hardly more than two years 
elapsed when he suddenly developed a fatal form of 
mental disease, and lingered for ten years in a long, 
slow, degrading decline. I thus became acquainted with 
frustration in one of its most woful shapes. I remem- 
ber how the poor young wife, during those ten years, 
widow in aU but name, sought alleviation in various di- 
rections for her intolerable grief. Work to occupy her 
mind was one; caring for the needs of the poor another. 
I remember also how futile these devices seemed. She 
had lived "on the heights"; she must now descend to 
lower levels ; she had had first best, she must now put up 
with second or third best. Gladly indeed would she 
have exchanged places with some of the poor women 
whom she assisted, could she have kept her husband at 
her side as they had theirs. It was weU enough for her 
to try to alleviate the troubles of these people, but what 
were their sorrows compared to hers ? And to keep the 
mind occupied by work, what was it at best but a tem- 
porary anodyne? When the work was over, in the still, 
lonely hours of the night, the storm of grief would break 
with aU the greater violence. I had not taught these my 
friends a really valid spiritual conception of the purpose 
of marriage : I had failed in that : and when they were 
in need of it they did not have it to support them. They 
had looked on marriage as a scene of felicity; they had 
not been taught to make allowance for the frustration. 
I had not made preparation for the palpable frustra- 
tions just mentioned, nor yet for others, for the dis- 
covery that the beloved person is faulty, that the nimbus 



64 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of divine personality does not coincide with the charac- 
ter. And especially did the lack of any explicit idea of 
personality prove fatal in those cases where the frustra- 
tion is most serious, where real or apparent incompati- 
bilities appear, or where actual degeneration occurs, and 
the hope of regeneration becomes remote. 

Bereavement was the second shape in which the fact 
of frustration most often came home to me. Hundreds 
of times I have spoken to people in the moment of the 
last leave-taking. The usual consolations, aside from 
those that depend on mythological beliefs, are : Submit 
to the inevitable; clinch your teeth and face the storms 
of fate. Remember the debt you owe to the living. 
There is work that remains for you to do. See to it that 
you do not by excessive grieving destroy your capacity 
for work. Instead of indulging in sorrow for your own 
loss, take upon yourself the sorrows of others. In par- 
ticular it is uplifting for one who has been more severely 
afflicted to take upon himself the sorrow of those whose 
burden is lighter. Be grateful for what you have pos- 
sessed. Think not so much of what you have lost, as of 
what you were privileged for a season to call your own. 
Make the virtues of those who are no longer living a 
force for good in your own life. Paint the portrait of 
your friend incessantly. Retouch it. Eliminate what 
was of merely transient value in him. Remember him in 
the light of his best qualities, and live so as to be able to 
endure his purified glance. Or, in the case of those 
whose lives were stained, seek to expiate their faults in 
your life. Purify and perpetuate them in this way in 
yourself. Memory is not a mere passive receptacle, it is 



MY VOCATION 65 

rather a creative faculty. Let it play upon the lives that 
are no longer sensibly present, and thus maintain the 
connection with them. A friend living across the sea, 
whom you will never see again, may yet be a living pres- 
ence for you if you continue by the aid of memory to be 
in communication with him. In the case of the departed, 
likewise, their effectual influence may remain none the 
less real. 

These various modes of consolation have each a cer- 
tain value. To the one last mentioned I attach the 
greatest value. Bereavement is a challenge for a fresh 
start in spiritual development. It should not mean 
putting up with the second best, but reaching out to- 
ward first best. The object to be achieved by the ethical 
teacher on such occasions is to help the bereaved to tie 
anew the threads that have been sundered, or rather to 
substitute a more ethereal but firmer tie for the contacts 
mediated by the senses. But this task of the reweaving 
of ties, spiritually, not sensibly, depends entirely for its 
success upon a spiritual conception of personality. And 
if this be lacking, the attempt is hopeless. Frustration 
itself must be recognized as partial if it is to lead beyond 
itself. There must be found in man that which cannot 
be defeated if the defeat is not to be accepted as final. 

A third kind of frustration was brought home to me 
by the problem of specialization, as it presented itself 
in the course of my efforts to work out an ethical theory 
true to the facts of life. To discharge competently my 
own special function, I saw that I ought to be acquainted 
with the best ethical thought of the past. This meant 
an exhaustive study of the philosophical systems of 



66 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

which the ethical thought of the philosophers is the fruit. 
I ought further to be familiar with the great religions, 
in which so much of the ethical insight of mankind is in- 
corporated. I ought to acquaint myself with the moral 
history of mankind in so far as it is accessible, including 
that of the primitive races. I ought to gain a survey of 
the variations of moral opinion that have so staggered 
belief in the possibility of ethical truth. I ought to mas- 
ter at least the general principles of the physical and 
biological sciences, since it is impossible that the first 
principles of ethics should not be related to the govern- 
ing principles that obtain in other departments of 
knowledge. I ought in addition to master in their ethi- 
cal aspect the economic and political problems of the 
present day, as well as the psychology of individual 
and social life, in order to be able to apply with some de- 
gree of competence the directives of ethics to actual con- 
duct. There are in addition other subjects, such as juris- 
prudence, poetry and the fine arts, that have ultimate re- 
lation to ethics, and that may not safely be neglected. 
Behold, then, the problem of specialism in one of its most 
appalling forms. For how can any one individual hope 
to adequately fill out such a programme? And what I 
have said is but my own personal illustration of a general 
problem that more and more besets every reflective per- 
son in our time. And it is a problem that has direct bear- 
ings upon the question of human personality. The per- 
sonality is not a detached and isolated thing. It is a cen- 
ter that radiates out in every possible direction, and de- 
pends for the release of its energy on the influences re- 
ceived in turn from all directions. On the one hand, to 



MY VOCATION 67 

have a footing at all in reality one must be a specialist, 
and the fields of specialism are becoming more and more 
restricted. To know one thing well is the indispensable 
condition of the sense of mastery, yes, of self-respect. 
And yet it seems to be becoming increasingly clear that 
one cannot really master a single specialty without 
knowing of other specialties whatsoever is related to 
one's own. Narrowness, and loss of power, and conse- 
quent decay of the special function itself, seems the one 
alternative. Dilettantism, the other. But again I ask, 
who can actually fill out such a programme? The frus- 
tration of effort thus appears, in its intellectual guise, 
as one more manifestation of that general fact of frus- 
tration which we meet with wherever we turn.^ 

On the side of character the same reflections occur. 
Unity in the direction of distinctiveness or uniqueness is 
the end and aim. But instead of unity of character, con- 
flict of inner tendencies, ever-recurrent rupture of pro- 
visional harmonies, a duality of self or multiplicity of 
selves, are the facts attested by one's inner experience. 
And frustration here, at the core of a man's being, is 
perhaps more painful and more seemingly contradictory 
of the very ideal and purpose of ethical development 
than in any of the forms previously recorded. 

The last instance of frustration that I will mention 
appears in connection with the cosmic relation of our 
race. The thought of the death of the individual may be 

' A new conception of culture is needed, based neither on ex- 
clusive specialism, nor on the ambition to know everything after 
the manner of Goethe in his early days, and such a conception of 
culture must supply the foundation of an educational philosophy. 



68 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

overcome by the idea of perpetuity in the lives of suc- 
cessors. The death of the human race, its eventual ex- 
tinction, is capable of no such assured compensation. 
We are ethical beings, committed to the pursuit of an 
ideal end, yet the cosmic conditions are such as to make 
the end unattainable within the limits of a finite world. 
This unattainableness of the end it is true is the very 
ground and foundation of the supersensible interpreta- 
tion of ethical experience. Yet this thought itself can 
only be made good by a positive interpretation of per- 
sonality (of the spiritual nature), which we are yet to 
seek. As viewed empirically, the human generations are 
but accidents of nature, waves on the sea of life, passing 
shadows. And viewing ourselves in this manner our 
self-respect goes to pieces. The idea of obligation van- 
ishes. Man's claim to infinite worth is bitterly mocked. 
Unless we can reach the spiritual view of life, the frus- 
tration of purpose in the large, that is, of humanity as a 
whole, is final. 

These then, summarily stated, are the problems with 
which an ethical philosophy of life has to deal. 

1. How to remedy the belittlement of man, the in- 
finitesimal insignificance of him as a creature of time 
and space, when compared with the immensities of the 
world around him — its spatial and temporal immensities. 
What is man in the presence of these myriads of worlds, 
of this unending procession of time that he should at- 
tribute to himself significance, nay, worth? Is he per- 
haps an infinitesimal member of an Infinite? — ^preserv- 
ing in this way the sense of his littleness, and of the vast- 
ness that bears down upon him, and yet maintaining 



MY VOCATION 69 

himself irrefragably at his station, as indispensable to 
the perfection of the whole. 

2. How to discover a way of retaining the connection 
between man and the lower forms of life that preceded 
him, not doing violence to the facts which the evolution- 
ists have brought out, and yet at the same time assuring 
man's spiritual distinction? Does he perhaps possess in 
his ethical nature a window, so to speak, through which 
he can catch at least a glimpse of the ultimate reality, of 
the infinite life which is the real life, behind the picture 
screen of sea and mountain, plants and animals? 

3. How to overcome the various types of frustration 
mentioned above: frustration on its intellectual side, or 
the reconciliation of specialist efficiency with breadth 
and relatedness ; frustration on the character side. 

Frustration in the social relations, as in marriage, or 
as in the case of defective children. 

Frustration through bereavement, or the privation 
suffered by the going out of our life of lives with which 
we are inseparably connected by ethical as well as aff ec- 
tional ties. 

Frustration in the attempt to carry out projects of 
social betterment; on what moral ground to assert the 
possible moral value of life in the slums today, and at 
the same time to put forth and to stimulate the most as- 
siduous efforts to abolish the slum ; on what grounds to 
affirm that the best life is possible under the worst con- 
ditions, and yet not to cease or for an instant relax the 
effort to change the conditions. 

The problem of how to support and console the 
wretched multitudes of mankind in the interval that 



70 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

must elapse before the reform of conditions can take 
real effect; the problem of support and consolation in 
fatal sickness, on the deathbed, and in the harrowing rec- 
ollection of irremediable and irrevocable wrong done 
to others; the problem raised by the prospective ex- 
tinction, or the possible old age and degeneration before 
extinction of mankind — all these problems should be 
taken together, not one, for instance the so-called social 
problem, accentuated, leaving the rest out of sight. From 
one peg they all hang, on one cardinal idea they all de- 
pend — ^the idea of personality as positively defined, of 
the holy thing as not merely inviolable without regard to 
its content, but inviolable because of a certain positive 
content. The ascription of worth to man, in this sense, 
is the fundamental problem of all, and to the full discus- 
sion of this we shall turn in the constructive part of the 
volume which is now to follow. 



BOOK II 
PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: CRITIQUE OF KANT 

I BEGIN my statement of the ethical ideal with a 
critique of Kant. The reason for this is that Kant stands 
forth preeminent among all philosophers as the one who 
emphatically asserts that the attribute of inviolability at- 
taches to every human being, in his formula that every 
man is to be treated as an end per se, and never to be 
used as a mere tool by others. The formula as thus word- 
ed by him is subject to grave objections which will be 
dealt with later on. But the grand conception of the 
moral worthwhileness of all men is specially connected 
with the name of Kant. Did he succeed, on the basis 
of his system, in establishing this conception? He seems 
to make it the corner-stone of his ethics. Is the corner- 
stone secure? 

Referring again to my individual development, I 
should find it difficult to express how much Kant's Meta- 
physik der Sitten and Kritik der praktischen Vernunft 
at one time meant to me. 

The one ethical fact of which I was so to speak per- 
fectly assured, the "inviolability" so often mentioned in 
previous chapters, is extremely hard to justify to the 
thinking mind. The empirical school of philosophers 
scoff at the very notion of it. The practice of the world 
is a perpetual, painful evidence of the small attention 

73 



74 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

paid to it, and even idealistic philosophers from Plato 
down have found it quite possible to construct quasi- 
ethical systems based on the idea, not of human equality, 
but of the inferiority of the greater number. In Kant, 
however, one encounters an epoch-making philosopher 
who not only accepts as a fact the idea of inviolability, 
and of the kind of equality that goes with it, but who un- 
dertakes to set it forth in such a manner as to command 
the assent of the reason. For a long time I believed 
that he had succeeded in his great enterprise ; and it was 
only after years of discipleship, not indeed without sup- 
pressed misgivings, that I began to see that I had been 
mistaken. 

My eyes were opened when I realized certain ex- 
tremely questionable moral consequences to which his 
doctrine led him: for instance, his unspeakable theory 
of marriage, his defense of capital punishment, the stiff 
individualism of his system, and his failure to establish 
an instrumental connection between the empirical goods, 
of wealth, culture, and the like, and the supreme good or 
supreme end as defined by him. I was forced by these 
unsound conclusions to ask myself whether the founda- 
tions of the system are sound. Surely if it is true of any 
system of thought, it is true of an ethical system that it 
must be judged by its fruits. The Kantian system is 
indeed vastly impressive, and even sublime in some of its 
aspects. We travel on the road along which Kant leads 
with a certain sense of exaltation, but when at the end of 
our journey we find that we have reached a goal at which 
we cannot consent to abide, it is imperative to inquire 
whether the point of departure was well taken. 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 75 

The point of departure in Kant's exposition is the 
existence in all men of a sense of duty. Moral relations 
subsist only between moral beings. All men possess a 
sense of duty, — therefore all men are moral beings, 
therefore all are morally equal, — therefore no one may 
be used as a mere tool for the benefit of others, but is 
to be treated as worth while on his own account. Thus 
runs the argument. 

The sense of duty is the consciousness of being bound 
to render implicit obedience to a categorical imperative. 
Our rational nature tells us categorically what is right 
to do. Our rational nature issues absolute commands. 
The sense of duty is man's response to them. Kant does 
not for a moment imply that either he or anyone else has 
ever adequately obeyed. The moral dignity, the moral 
equality of men, does not depend on the obedience but 
on the consciousness of the obligation to obey — on ac- 
knowledged subjection to the command. The actual 
moral performances of some men are certainly better 
than those of others ; but of no one, not even of the best 
of men, can it be shown that the moral principle in its 
purity, that is, unadulterated by baser incentives, was 
ever the actuating motive of his conduct. The different 
members of the human species differ morally in de- 
gree, but are of the same moral kind, being distinguished 
from the lower animals not because they obey the moral 
law, but because they recognize the obligation to obey 
it. This sort of consciousness may be dim in some, but 
it exists in all. The most brutal murderer is dimly aware 
of the holy law which he has transgressed. 

The great dictum of the universal moral equality of 



76 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

mankind is thus made to depend on an assumed fact. 
If this fact can be successfully disputed, the dictum it- 
self is imperilled. It has been disputed, not flippantly, 
but most seriously, and it is in my opinion obnoxious 
to fatal objections. I do not indeed believe it pos- 
sible to establish the negative, to wit, that the sense of 
duty does not lurk somewhere, is not latent somewhere 
in the consciousness of persons morally the most obtuse ; 
but I hold it to be impossible to prove the affirmative, to 
wit, that a sense of duty does exist in all human beings, 
even in the most degraded. Kant's dictum of equality 
depends on making good the affirmative proposition, but 
this he has failed to do. 

One circumstance especially which at first sight seems 
favorable to Kant's contention turns against him. He 
has been assailed on the ground that his categorical im- 
perative is a fiction, that no such an imperative plays 
a role in the actual experience of men. On the contrary, 
the actual experience of men is replete with categorical 
imperatives. Nothing in the life of man plays a greater 
role than these imperatives. The danger that threatens 
Kant's demonstration is due to the nimiber of rival cate- 
goricals that compete with his, and from which the 
one he sets up is not with certainty distinguishable. To 
put the matter simply, what is called in technical lan- 
guage a categorical imperative is nothing else than a 
way of acting somehow felt by the individual to be obli- 
gatory upon him, whether he likes it or dislikes it. It is a 
constraint in which he is bound to acquiesce, a public rule 
of some sort which overrides his private propensities. 

Constraints of this sort are numerous. Many of them 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 77 

no one would think of designating as moral. Some 
are distinctly antimoral. I will mention a few : — for in- 
stance, the rules of behavior derived from the tabu no- 
tion. Certain kinds of food may not be eaten; certain 
objects like the Ark of the Covenant in David's time 
may not be touched.^ Strict tabus obtain in regard 
to marriage such as the rules of endogamy and exogamy. 
Certain persons may not even be looked at. A feeling 
of horror is felt toward those who transgress these rules ; 
and the transgression of them is often considered far 
more reprehensible than a moral sin. It would evidently 
be absurd to characterize a Hottentot or a Fiji Islander 
as the moral equal of a civilized man on the ground that, 
like the latter, he possesses the sense of duty, consisting 
in his case of an unquestioning acknowledgment of the 
categorical imperative of tabus. 

Gang loyalty is another instance in point. In one of 
our prisons a certain convict is at present paying the 
penalty of a crime which was really committed by one of 
his pals. He could have got off scot free if he had 
"squealed." But "squealing" is contrary to the honor 
code of the gang and he preferred to sacrifice his liberty 
rather than prove recreant to the claims of gang loyalty. 
There are some writers who hold that this is an instance 
of morality, genuine as far as it goes, but restricted 
within too narrow a circle. The fact that it is restricted 
within too narrow a circle, that fidelity to a few is com-, 
patible with violent hostility against the community at 
large, seems to me to prove that the moral quality is ab- 
sent. Morality is either universal or nothing. Gang 

^ See II Samuel, VI, 6, 7. 



78 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

loyalty is a social phenomenon, but not an ethical 
phenomenon. The distinction between the two terms 
will be enforced later on. In any event the sense of con- 
straint is manifest. The moral character of the con- 
straint I deny. 

Another example of an imperative which is categorical 
enough but at the same time non-ethical is furnished by 
Darwin's well-known explanation of the original of con- 
science. He assumes that certain ways of behaving 
which our ancestors found to be socially useful, have be- 
come registered as it were in our organisms, and consti- 
tute a kind of race-consciousness which persists in each 
individual. This latent consciousness is potent as a ten- 
dency, though often not masterful enough to repress the 
recalcitrant egoistic impulses. A conflict ensues. The 
deep ingrained tendency makes itself felt. And as social 
beings we are aware that we ought to side with it. But 
the egoistic impulses break out on the surface of con- 
sciousness and vehemently urge us in the opposite direc- 
tion. The feeling of obligation, and thereafter of re- 
morse, are the record of the inner struggle. I do not here 
undertake to discuss at length the truth of Darwin's the- 
ory. There are a number of weak spots in it, to which I 
shall merely allude in passing. First, he speaks of acts 
found to be socially useful in primitive communities. Is 
it possible to show that the same or similar acts retain 
their utility in a developed industrial society like that of 
the present day? Is not the term "socially useful" ex- 
tremely vague, and can the notion implied in it be ex- 
panded without the assistance of a truly ethical prinei- 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 79 

ple?^ Then again, why should the thing called social 
utility overawe the individual mind and thwart individ- 
ual purpose? Why should not the daring egotist affirm 
his right to be and flourish in the present hour, in the 
teeth of social utility? It will be said that the claims 
are insistent, that the tendency is ingrained, that it has 
become instinctive in him, and that he cannot release 
himself from the control it exercises over him. But in- 
stincts can be weakened and in time extinguished, like 
the fear of the dark, when the absence of an objective 
cause is recognized. Why should not the altruistic im- 
pulse likewise, by the method of Freudian analysis, if 
you please, be exposed to the light, and the egotist there- 
by be enabled to disembarrass himself of the interference 
of dead ancestors in his life purposes, and to proceed on 
his way undisturbed by any inward qualms? 

These examples serve to illustrate the point with 
which we are here concerned, namely, that the presence 

^ Primitive communities valued cooperation because it was socially 
useful. But there are different kinds of cooperation. Which kind 
shall we of today adopt? The mere idea of cooperation affords 
no clue. The self-sacrifice of the individual to the whole of which 
he is a part is socially useful. But on what occasions and to what 
degree is it useful.^ Altruism is socially useful. We are to serve 
others. But what in them shall we serve? Their physical needs, 
their intellectual needs, all their needs together? Is that humanly 
possible? Here again an ethical principle is required to define the 
quality and the limits of the service. The latent race-consciousness 
of which Darwin speaks affords no light on the ethical problems 
proper. The concept of social utility, if not valueless, is at best 
only of subsidiary value in any attempt to solve these problems. 
So far from reading once and for all the riddle of conscience, 
Darwin has not read aright the terms of the riddle. 



80 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and operation of undoubted constraints does not es- 
tablish the existence in all men of the sense of duty on 
which Kant founds universal moral equality. Kant 
would indeed object that all these so-called constraints 
or imperatives are hypothetical, and not really categori- 
cal. By an hypothetical imperative he understands one 
in which the command depends upon an "if" — if there 
be invisible spirits such as primitive men imagined, then 
the rules of tabu follow. // the safety of the gang is 
an object of commanding interest, then gang loyalty is 
obligatory. If the preservation and prosperity of 
human society in general (a society superior to that of 
ants and of bees indeed but like them a product of nature 
and not radically distinct from them) be regarded as 
the supreme end of desire and endeavor, then the rules 
of social behavior are to be obeyed. But, he would 
say, none of these objects are fit to rank so high. They 
all are optional ends. An hypothetical imperative is 
one in which the end pursued is optional, the imperative 
extending only to the means. If the end be desired, 
then it is reasonable, and in so far imperative, that we 
adopt the means that lead to its attainment. An im- 
perative truly categorical, however, is one in which the 
obligation extends to the end proposed as well as to the 
means. It is not left to our inclination to embrace or to 
refuse the end, it being of such a kind as absolutely to 
constrain us to accept it. 

But if this be so, then in this first part of our criticism 
we turn upon Kant and declare that he has nowhere 
given us reason to believe that the acceptance of an 
absolute end is implied in the kind of constraints to 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 81 

which the generality of men submit. And again if such 
acceptance cannot be proved, then the universal moral 
equality of men based by him on the presence in all of 
the sense of duty disappears, and his lofty ethical struc- 
ture breaks down at this point. 



CHAPTER II 

CRITIQUE OF KANT (Continued) 

I NOW proceed to the second point of criticism, which 
strikes at the heart of Kant's ethics. Man according 
to Kant is worth while on his own account (an end per 
se), never to be used as a mere tool or thing. He is 
a person, an object towards whom we are bound to 
evince absolute respect. Yet Kant immediately goes 
on to say that there is no object in all the world, neither 
man nor any other, that is worth while on its own ac- 
count, that deserves such respect. Kant's views of actual 
human nature are tinged with somber pessimism. 
(Compare the chapter on Radical Evil in his Religion 
Within the Limits of Pure Reason. ) A strange para- 
dox is thus presented to us. Man is to be accepted as a 
worth while object, and yet there is no worth while 
object. How does Kant seek to escape from this pre- 
dicament? He says, not the man primarily, but some- 
thing that happens in the man, is supremely signifi- 
cant: certain acts are worth while on their own account, 
• — the agent only in so far as he performs such acts (or, 
let us add with a sigh, as he tries to perform them) — 
namely, acts which have as their sole motive respect for 
universal law. Then he informs us that similar processes 
occur in other agents, in fellow human beings, or, more 
precisely, that these others are capable of trying to act 

82 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 83 

as I myself feel bound to try to act. Consider how far 
fetched is the argument, on what wavering foundations 
has been placed the ethical pronouncement of human 
worth and human equality in which our interest is so 
profoundly engaged. We do wish to be assured of this 
cardinal truth. No other truth is practically and theoret- 
ically of greater importance. As against the iniquitous 
practices of the world, as against the exploitation of la- 
bor, as against the degradation of woman, as against po- 
litical tyranny whether exercised by kings or by mobs, 
we raise up for our shield the indefeasible worth of men 
— ^not of some men but of all men. And now, behold! 
the thinker to whom we owe the forcible expression of 
this truth seems to have left it in the air. I scrutinize 
my neighbors, and find in their behavior no sure sign of 
real worth. I fall back on myself and I discover what? 
The idea of an act which, if I could perform it, would 
stand on its own merits (would be self-justified). I 
then find that I am bound to try to perform such acts. 
I cannot afiirm that in a single instance I have ever per- 
formed such an act. I next infer — on what tenuous 
ground has been shown in the last chapter — that my fel- 
low beings have the same inner experience as mine. 
And it is for this reason that by a circuitous inference 
I declare them to be worth while objects. 

That Kant has formulated a truth of the utmost im- 
portance for mankind (that no man is to be treated as 
a mere tool), seems to me incontestable. That he has 
not made good his own proposition is my contention, 
and that the whole problem must therefore be taken up 
de novo. It will assist us in doing so to expose the 



84 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

flaw in his categorical imperative, or the formal principle 
of universality and necessity applied to hmnan actions, 
which in his view imprints upon them the character of 
absolute rightness. 

Note that Kant approaches the problems of ethics 
from the side of physical science, and with the bias of 
the physical scientist. The ethical principle he sets up, 
the bare idea of universal necessity or of law in general, 
is derived by way of abstraction from the particular 
laws of nature. It is a physical principle in disguise. 
To understand Kant's system, it is simply indispensable 
to keep this point in mind. He was pre-occupied during 
the major portion of his life with profound speculations 
on scientific subjects. The title of the Critique of Pure 
Reason might not be inappropriately changed into "A 
treatise on the fundamental assumptions of science, as 
handled by Newton and his successors." He was un- 
deniably interested in ethics. His ultimate aim was to 
clear the way for the confident holding of ethical 
principles. (See the Preface to the Critique of Pure 
Reason. ) But he could not divest himself of the preju- 
dice of his temperament and of his lifelong pursuit. 
He is not singular in this respect. To borrow the first 
principle of ethics from some other field is a common 
and apparently ineradicable error. Mechanics, gesthet- 
ics, and recently biology, have been laid under contribu- 
tion for this purpose. A consistent attempt to study 
ethical phenomena on their own ground, to mark off 
what is really distinctive in the data of ethical experi- 
ence, and then to search for some principle which shall 
serve to give a coherent account of them, has to my 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 85 

knowledge never yet been undertaken. Always ethics 
has been treated as an annex to some other discipline. 
Always we behold the attempt to assimilate before the 
distinctive traits and characteristics have been carefully 
investigated. Never yet has the independence of this 
wonderful aspect of human nature been truly acknowl- 
edged. Kant indeed freed ethics from its long tutelage 
to theology; but he left it still in subjection, subject to 
his own favorite study, physical science. 

But though the notion of necessity, together with that 
of universality, which he derived from physics was em- 
ployed by him as a fundamental principle of rightness 
in conduct, the principle itself insensibly, and as it would 
seem unbeknown to himself, underwent a remarkable 
change in the course of his undertaking to give it a new 
application. The following brief comments will serve 
to elucidate this point. 

In physics, whenever an antecedent phenomenon has 
been exactly described, and a sequent phenomenon is 
defined in the same fashion, the connection is pro- 
nounced to be necessary — as for instance the trans- 
formation of mechanical energy into heat, and con- 
versely. A single carefully guarded experiment may 
suffice to establish the necessary nexus between two 
phenomena. And after having established the necessity, 
we are confident of the universality. If exceptions 
should occur and contravene the supposed law, the calcu- 
lations or the observations are to be corrected. But nev- 
er in physical science do we start from universality and 
predict necessity therefrom. Kant in his ethics invaria- 
bly couples together the two terms Universal and Neces- 



86 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

sary. But he reverses the procedure of science, he 
begins with the tmiversality and thereupon affirms the 
necessity. 

Universality is for him the test of moral necessity. 
If an act can be universalized, the performance of it, 
according to him, is morally necessary. For instance, 
the question is asked. Is it right to kill? Look at the 
act of killing, says Kant, and see whether it can be 
universalized, that is to say, whether if everybody felt 
at liberty to kill, the act of the murderer would or would 
not be self-defeating? He kills in order to affirm his 
life at the expense of another's. If his action were to 
be generally imitated, his own life would be forfeit, or at 
least in danger, and he would be annulling what he in- 
tends to affirm. Hence murder is morally wrong: to 
sacredly respect the life of others is right. 

But not only is the order reversed, so that necessity 
follows on the heels of universality, but the very mean- 
ing of the term necessity is altered. A logical necessity 
is substituted for a physical necessity. The idea of ne- 
cessity as handled by physical science denotes the con- 
nection between one thing and something else. It is 
not the thing itself but its relation to some other thing 
that is necessary. It is not the phenomenon A nor the 
phenomenon B, in the case of a cause and its effect, that 
is declared to be necessary, but the sequence of B on A, 
the circumstance that B is tied up to A, must follow 
in its wake. But the term Necessity as used by Kant 
in his Ethics, denotes a relation of a thing to itself. It 
is in fact equivalent to self-consistency, which is a logical 
notion derived from the principle of self-identity. A 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 87 

is A, and it is not thinkable that it should be non-A. 
Similarly Kant says: If a man desires to affirm his 
life, that is, to be self -preserving, it is not thinkable, 
it would not be rational or logical on his part, to per- 
form an act which would be self-defeating. Kant does 
not say that a man might not irrationally take another 
man's life, regardless of the consequences to himself; 
he says that as a rational intelligence acting on purely 
logical motives he could not do so.^ To repeat, then, 
physical necessity is a relation of one thing to another 
thing: the logical necessity involved in self -consistency 
is a relation of a thing to itself. 

My next contention, and this touches the root of the 
matter, is that the notion of end is incompatible with 
self-consistency as the paramount principle in ethics. 
For a self-consistent rational being is a being in har- 
mony with himself, one who if this harmony should in 
some unaccountable way ever be broken would by his 
own endeavor seek to return to himself. (Kant de- 
clares that the morality of any one man cannot be 
affected by his fellows, by any influence from the out- 
side ; it must be his own act. ) But an end presupposes 
some outside object as a means: means and ends are in- 
separable correlatives. On the other hand, an entity 
which merely affirms itself, or if somehow alienated from 
self endeavors without assistance from beyond its sphere 

^ He also assumes a society not only of rational intelligences de- 
termined by the same rational motives, but equal in ability to carry 
out their motives. (See my article in Mind [new series. Vol. XI, 
No. 42, p. 162], reprinted in the volume dedicated to William 
James, by the Philosophical Faculty of Columbia University.) 



88 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

to return to itself, is no true end at all, and cannot be 
designated as such. It is no end because it employs no 
means. 

What warrant then has Kant for introducing the 
foreign notion of end into a world of pure self -consis- 
tency? When we use the term Necessity in relation 
to physical phenomena, as of cause and effect, we as- 
sert unalterable sequence, unity of temporal and spatial 
differentiae. When we use the same term as Kant uses 
it, we assert the unity of a thing with itself. But this in 
the nature of the case does not admit the intrusion of the 
alien concept of the outside. The spiritual society or 
pattern to which human society ought to be conformed, 
is according to Kant a society of ends, of ends per se. 
This is his great pronouncement. But the very idea on 
which he lays so much stress, the idea of end, on closer 
scrutiny of his premises disappears. The entities com- 
posing that society are self-sufficing, and moreover in- 
trinsically unrelated to each other. Rational self-pres- 
ervation is the only character that can be predicated of 
any of them. 

I have laid stress on the fact that Kant derived his 
ethical principle from his physics. The passage in 
which he speaks of the ethical order as a universal and 
necessary order like that of nature is to my mind con- 
clusive. I now urge in addition that this sort of second 
nature superimposed upon existing nature would not 
have to our contemplating minds a dignity superior to 
that of physical nature. The moral order as thus ex- 
hibited would not possess the worth we attribute to it 
as exalted above what is called the natural order. The 



CRITIQUE OF KANT 89 

falling stone is a perfect illustration of physical neces- 
sity. Necessity passed through human consciousness, 
or bathed in human consciousness, is not on that account 
a more eligible principle. Nay, since human conscious- 
ness interferes and causes contingent actions, due to 
passion, appetite, etc., the moral order constructed by 
men should be even less worth while than the physical 
order of nature, if indeed necessity be the touchstone 
of worth.^ 

To summarize: according to Kant man as an object 
is unfit to warrant the claim of unconditional obliga- 
tion on the part of others toward himself. An abstract 
principle must be sought. This principle is universality, 
and necessity based on universality. Respect for this 
purely abstract notion is that which alone imparts a 
moral quality to so-called moral acts. We start, ac- 
cording to Kant, with the declaration that man is an 
end per se. But we reject him as an object, and take 
refuge in a formal principle. We then assume that 
every human being is conscious of the working within 
himself of this formal principle and acknowledges his 
subjection to it, whether he is able to analyze it out 
or not. And thus indirectly we derive out of emptiness 
a ray of glory which we allow to fall upon each and 
every man. 

The question now is, since this approach to the ethical 

^ Surefootedness, or certainty in thinking and in acting seems to 
have been the chief desideratum at which Kant aimed. As against 
scepticism or mere empirical groping this element of the inner life 
is obviously of exceeding value. But it is far from being the only 
element to be taken into account. 



90 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

problem manifestly fails, must we not begin at the 
opposite end, and take the attribution of worth to men, 
however unworthy they may actually be, as our starting- 
point? 



CHAPTER III 

PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON WORTH, AND ON THE 
REASONS WHY THE METHOD EMPLOYED BY 
ETHICS MUST BE THE OPPOSITE OF THAT EM- 
PLOYED BY THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES 

The moral equality of men is a corollary of the at- 
tribution of worth to all men. Did we not ascribe worth 
to them, there is no reason why we should not make 
servile use of them. But there are admittedly formidable 
difficulties in the way of attributing worth to human 
nature. 

The first and most obvious of these is the existence 
of repulsive traits in human beings, such as sly cunning, 
deceit, falsehood, grossness, cruelty: homo homini lupus! 
Secondly, there is the prevalent error of employing 
ethical terms, like good and bad, to denote the merely 
attractive and repellent traits. ^ Attractive traits, such 
as gentleness, sweetness, kindness, a sympathetic dis- 
position, are, in those fortunate enough to possess them, 
pleasing accidents of nature. We delight in them, but 
have no reason to ascribe the superlative quality of worth 
to those who possess them. If the evil that men do re- 
volts us, the so-called good in them does not give us 
the right to surround their heads with the nimbus of 
worth. Thirdly, and perhaps even more deterrent than 

^ See the more extended remarks on this subject in Book III. 

91 



92 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the ever-present spectacle of evil and the inadequacy of 
so-called goodness, is the commonplaceness, the cheap- 
ness of men. 

It must be admitted that, with rare exceptions, our 
estimates of others are apt to be low rather than lofty. 
Can we ascribe worth to those whom we hold cheap? 
The reason of our habitual under-estimation of fellow 
men I think is that we regard them from the standpoint 
of the use to which we can put them, and do not see 
them from the inside, as it were, in the light of the 
marvelous energies of which human nature is the scene. 
The grossest matter, the most ordinary physical hap- 
penings, reveal to the instructed eye of the scientist the 
play of forces which it taxes the most powerful intel- 
lects in some measure to apprehend and describe. Yet 
these miracles escape the dull senses of those of us who 
deal with the forces of nature from the point of view of 
their immediate use. We turn on the electric light, but 
have little more than a crude surmise of the things 
that the word electricity meant to Faraday, Clerk Max- 
well, or Hertz. And as we turn on the electric light, so 
we turn on our fellowmen, as it were, to use them. The 
thought of the poet — "What a piece of work is man, 
how infinite in faculty!" occurs to us only at scattered 
moments. And yet things transpire in the inner life 
of human beings far more marvelous than the chemical 
processes or the flux of electric waves, did we but attend 
to them. There is in particular one kind of energy to 
which the quality of worth may well attach itself. It 
is unlike the physical forces ; it is not a transformed mode 
of mechanical energy. It is mi generis^ underivative. 



ETHICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES 93 

unique; it is synonymous with highest freedom; it is 
power raised to the Nth degree. It is ethical energy. 
To release it in oneself is to achieve unbounded expan- 
sion. Morality, as commonly understood, is a system 
of rules, chiefly repressive. Ethical energy, on the con- 
trary, is determined by the very opposite tendency; a 
tendency, it is true, never more than tentatively effectu- 
ated under finite conditions. And because the energy 
is unique, it points toward a unique, irreducible, hence 
substantive entity in man, from which it springs. This 
entity is itself incognizable, yet the effect it produces 
requires that it be postulated. The category of sub- 
stance, which is almost disappearing from science, is 
to be reinstalled in ethics. Ethics cannot dispense with 
it. This, as a prelude, may suffice to indicate the path 
along which we shall proceed. 

The Reason Why the Method of Ethics Must Be the 
Opposite of the Method Employed by the Physical 

Sciences 

Physical science begins from the bottom and builds 
upwards. It analyzes phenomena into their elements, 
and thereupon seeks to combine these elements into 
structures that shall correspond to experience. In this 
business it never comes to a finish. Its analysis of the 
elements is provisional. Every element is hypothetical. 
Indeed it is plain in the nature of the case that no 
element can be ultimate. An element is a unit, and 
every empirical unit necessarily conceals in its bosom a 
plexus of which it is the unification. The very idea of 



94 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

unit requires for its complement a manifold of some 
kind. In hypothetical units, or ideal constructs that 
have for their purpose to lead to the discovery and 
arrangement of real phenomena, science abounds. 
Atoms, electrons, energy conceived as a substance by 
Ostwald, Spencer's physiological units, are examples. 

The results achieved by science are never more than 
approximations in the sense that the units, the bricks 
with which the house is built, are liable to be rejected, 
and the constructions achieved are subject to revision. 

The point however which I wish to emphasize is that 
the scientist is satisfied of the truth, the reality of its 
partial results. Newton, for instance, in formulating 
the law of gravitation has, so to speak, marked off a 
strip of reality. The ground covered cannot be lost; 
when some natural law is enunciated, the proper condi- 
tions for its discovery and verification having been ob- 
served, a sure footing in reality has been gained, science 
standing to this extent on terra jirma, though beyond 
the domain within which the law applies the phenomena 
may be heaving and billowing like the sea. 

Now the question I am intent upon is, Why is it pos- 
sible for science to be content with partial acquisition? 
Why does it profess to know positively a part without 
knowing the whole? And why can ethics not take a 
step without an ideal of the whole? 

Kant's chief purpose in the Critique of Pure Reason 
was to vindicate the certainty of the physical knowledge 
of a part as being compatible with total ignorance of 
the whole. The older metaphysics was engaged in the 
attempt to supply the whole, to sketch it out in order 



ETHICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES 95 

to give certainty to the part that is within the reach 
of science. The older metaphysics said to science : You 
have in hand the conditioned, but remember the con- 
ditioned depends on the unconditioned. Unless, there- 
fore, you round out what you possess, with the help of 
the unconditioned, the certainty you seem to have within 
the field of the conditioned disappears. Again, science 
traces causes, and the older metaphysicians insisted that 
the whole chain of causes hangs in air unless it be at- 
tached to a first cause. Now Kant's Critique of Pure 
Reason really amounts in nuce to this: you do not re- 
quire the whole in order to explain the part. Link the 
partial phenomena together in a certain way, a way de- 
pendent on the joint action of the space and time intui- 
tions and the categories, and you will gain the desired 
certainty. The certainty is in the linkage. We may add 
link to link of the chain of reality without troubling to 
consider by what piers it is supported or on what shore 
the piers rest — if indeed there be piers and shores at all, 
The bridge hangs over the River of Time and we can 
safely travel on it. How we get on to this bridge we 
do not know, and where we sjiall leave it we cannot 
know either. 

It is a mistake to speak of Kant as a rationalist pure 
and simple. When he expelled the older metaphysics 
he antagonized pure rationalism. The older metaphys- 
ics held that the mere existence of the conditioned 
proves the existence of the unconditioned, requires the 
unconditioned. In Kant's answer to this lies the gist of 
his enterprise in philosophy: You are quite right, he 
says, that the idea of the conditioned requires the idea of 



96 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the unconditioned, logically, rationally. But observe 
well, nature is not just logical or rational. There is an 
irrational element in it, namely, extended manifold and 
temporal sequence. Juxtaposition and sequence are ir- 
rational, because, if I interpret him rightly, in the case 
of each the relation presented to the mind is that of parts 
outside each other — in the one case alongside, in the other 
before and after ; while in the logical or rational relation 
the parts are implicit in the whole as in the case of the 
premises of a syllogism and the conclusion, the relation 
of a genus to the species, the universal to the particular. 

We have in nature, according to Kant, a partnership 
between the irrational and the rational factors. And 
thereupon he proceeds to argue that we impose laws on 
nature, understanding thereby that we get hold of 
reality or objectivity in so far as we are able to imprint 
the rational element upon the irrational. The positing 
of the thing per se, which has proved a stumbling-block 
to many, is no more than a confession that we shall never 
succeed entirely in this business of subjecting the irra- 
tional to the rational factor. The thing per se is the X 
that remains over when the rational function has done its 
utmost. A thing, a real object, is that which is imprinted 
with, penetrated with, rationality. The manifolds of 
space and time, of juxtaposition and sequence are in- 
capable of completely receiving this imprint, that is, of 
completely responding to our quest for reality, and this 
their incompetency is expressed in the notion of the thing 
per se. 

To return to the main question as to the difference 
between the method by which science proceeds and the 



ETHICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES 97 

reverse method prescribed to ethics, I ask, Why is abso- 
lute knowledge of nature impossible? The answer is. 
Because absolute knowledge would mean the completely 
rational construction of nature, and this is prevented by 
the irrational element existing in it. But why has the 
relative knowledge we possess the character of cer- 
tainty? Why are we sure of the law of gravitation? 
Why are we justified in saying that science within cer- 
tain limits plants her foot on terra solida? Because at 
certain points the sense data do coincide with the ra- 
tional requirements. There are recurrent phenomena of 
such a kind, coupled together in such a way, that each is 
capable of mathematical measurement^ and that the 
sequence of the one after the other can therefore be pre- 
dicted. 

Nature might have been arranged quite otherwise. 
The time spans might have been so long, as to prevent 
our observing the recurrences. A day-fly cannot observe 
the periodicity of the earth's revolution around its axis. 
The fact however that there is this partial correspond- 
ence between human rationality and the unknown nature 
of things is a bare fact, incapable of explanation.^ The 
answer, then, I take it, is: our knowledge of nature is 
relative, which means incompletely rational, because of 
the foreign element in nature unamenable to the opera- 

2 In Kant's view the rational element is projected on the irra- 
tional. In this way spatial juxtaposition is ideally transformed into 
a spatial continuum. In the same manner temporal sequence is 
ideally changed into a uniform temporal flux. Without the former, 
geometry could not have established its propositions; without the 
latter Galileo could not have measured the fall of the stone. 



98 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tion of the rational, the synthetic, function. This rela- 
tive knowledge is none the less certain, that is, in some 
sense absolute, because of the partial coincidence of the 
phenomena of nature and the synthetic processes of the 
mind. 

With this degree of certainty we must perforce con- 
tent ourselves, in dealing with outside nature. In try- 
ing to understand and interpret that which is not our- 
selves, we hit upon barriers which cannot be transcended, 
upon a foreign factor which opposes itself to our en- 
deavors. But it is otherwise in the sphere of conduct. 
Here, if there is to be certainty at all, in regard to 
right as distinguished from wrong, if there is to be such 
a thing as right in the strict sense, we cannot content 
ourselves with the paradoxical, relative-absolute just 
described. For here we not merely interpret but act, 
and we must possess an ideal plan of the whole if we are 
to be certain of our rightness in any particular part of 
conduct. For in conduct there is no such partial coin- 
cidence between the rational and the irrational as in 
the case of physical law. There is not a single partial 
rule of conduct, neither ''Thou shalt not kill" nor "Thou 
shalt not lie," nor any other that, taken by itself, is of 
itself ethically right. It may be right, it may be wrong. 
It takes its ethical quality from the plan of conduct 
as a whole, and without reference to the whole it is de- 
void of rightness.^ 

* The ethical character of acts depends on the worth of the agent 
and the object. Is it right to kill or to enslave a fellowman? We 
do not hesitate to kill an animal, or to harness horses to vehicles, 
or to use them as beasts of burden. Why not kill men, or use them 



ETHICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES 99 

I have thus indicated the ground of the distinction 
between the method of science and the method of ethics, 
a distinction, it is true, to which Kant himself did not 
adhere. Partial coincidence of the rational with the 
irrational is expressed in physical law; absence of such 
concurrence destroys any attempt to build up an ethical 
theory on the empirical method. We cannot plant our 
feet on the part, gaining there the sense of certainty: 
we must creatively conceive the ideal of the whole and 
educe every partial mode of ethical conduct from that. 

But how shall we proceed in the construction of such 
an ideal, for it is obvious that knowledge, in the scien- 
tific sense of the word, is entirely out of the question? 

as beasts of burden in like manner? — Only because they possess a 
worth which gives them a different standing. 

Is it on grounds of sympathy that I should observe the so-called 
moral rules? But if I am not sympathetic by nature, why should 
I be subject to censure in case I refrain from displaying a tender- 
ness which I do not feel? Why should I sympathize with the 
pleasures and pains of fellow human beings any more than with 
the pleasures and pains of inferior sentient creatures, unless men 
have worth? And worth, as will appear in the subsequent chapters, 
signifies indispensableness in a perfect whole. No detached thing 
has worth. No part of an incomplete system has worth. Worth 
belongs to those to whom it is attributed in so far as they are con- 
ceived of as not to be spared, as representing a distinctive indis- 
pensable preciousness, a mode of being without which perfection 
would be less than perfect. 

So that morality depends on the attribution of worth to men, and 
worth depends on the formation in the mind of an ideal plan of the 
whole — or instead of a complete plan let me say more precisely a 
rule of relations whereby the plan is itself progressively developed. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 

To recapitulate and at the same time to enlarge some- 
what the points thus far covered in Book II: Kant 
proclaims man an end per se. This promises a philo- 
sophic basis for an ethical world-view. The promise is 
not kept. Kant takes as his point of departure ab- 
solute obligation, and attempts to deduce out of an 
empty formula a worth-while object. Kant's formula 
is: Treat man never merely as a means, but also as an 
end per se. But how far man may be treated as a 
means, and what the relation of the means to the end 
may be is left undetermined. An upper crust of mo- 
rality is formed, as it were, upon the empirical flood of 
passions, desires, etc. A straight line is drawn beyond 
which the under world in every man may not emerge. 
But a truly instrumental view of the means as related 
to the end is not established. This is one of the great 
gaps in Kant's system. Note the almost puerile reason 
given for culture: we should cultivate our talents weil 
sie zu allerhand Zwecken nutzlich sein mogen, 

Kant's ethical order is a duplicate of the physical 
order. The notion of law is taken from physics, and 
expanded into the concept of law in general. Ethical 
behavior is represented as behavior motivated by the 
notion of lawfulness. Law is characterized by uni- 

100 / 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 101 

versality and necessity. Chapter II, however, shows 
that in physics universahty is predicated on the ground 
of an ascertained necessary connection. In physics, 
necessity has its true meaning as pertaining to a relation 
between one thing and another. If the linkage can be 
established, the universality follows. In Kant's ethics, 
on the contrary, necessity is taken as the consequence of 
the universality and the proper meaning of necessity is 
lost. Self -consistency takes the place of the relation to 
something else. The ideal society, as described, would 
therefore be a society of self -preserving rational intel- 
ligences, ethically solipsistic. 

Next we began the investigation into the idea of 
worth. Why do men hold themselves and others cheap ? 
They regard each other from the point of view of the 
use to be made of others and of their own life, and not 
from the point of view of the energies deployed. The 
turning on of electric power was used as an illustration. 
Nevertheless, even exceptional men, men regarded as 
illustrating in the highest degree the mental energies 
implicit in human nature, would not possess the quality 
of worth, that is, of being ends per se, merely on the 
score of their scientific or their artistic activities. We 
cannot say that the world would be less perfect if there 
were no scientists to discover its laws. There is a su- 
preme, a unique energy and it is to this that the quality 
of worth belongs.^ 

^ To rate anyone as an end per se means that in a world conceived 
as perfect his existence would be indispensable. The world we 
know may not be perfect, is not perfect, but we do conceive of an 
ideal world that is. And to ascribe to anyone the quality of worth. 



102 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The ethical quality called worth is the supreme good, 
and must be accessible to all, even to those to whom the 
lesser goods are denied. Ethics is a system of thought 
which stands or falls with the contention that while the 
better may be within reach only of the exceptional few, 
the best is within reach of all. 

In attempting to approach the task of building up a 
world-view based on ethical experience, it became un- 
avoidable to consider the method by which the approach 
might be made, and for this purpose to contrast the 
methods of science and the methods of ethics. Science, 
as we have seen, collects its bricks and builds its house 
by composition. Science analyzes phenomena into 
units, which it then combines. The mystery is how 
science can achieve certainty in respect to certain 
phenomena of nature without previous knowledge of 
the whole of nature. Kant's answer is that there is 
partial congruity between the mental functions and the 
data that come to us from the unknown. Kant's 
Critique of Pure Reason faces in two directions. It 
expels the older metaphysics which assumed that the 
empirical world is rational throughout, or rationalizable, 
and which thence argued the existence of the uncondi- 
tioned as necessarily implied in the existence of the con- 
ditioned, and of a first cause as actually implied in the 
chain of causes and effects. Kant contends that there is 
an irrational element, namely, bare juxtaposition (part 
outside part), and bare sequence (part before and after 
part), while the logical or rational relation implies that 

to denominate him an end per se, is to place him into that world, 
to regard him as potentially a member of it. 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 103 

the part is to be conceived as implicit in the whole. 
Juxtaposition and sequence, therefore, can never be 
completely rationalized. On the other hand, Kant un- 
dertakes to prove that whatever of reality we know is 
traceable to the projection of the rational factor upon 
the irrational. One might even say that, according to 
Kant, the mind itself produces the iiTational factor, 
since the intuitions of space and time are according to 
him, functions of the mind itself — ^the mind setting up 
a manifold so constituted as to receive sense impres- 
sions. At any rate the capital point to which we were 
led up was that science puts her foot on terra firma in 
a restricted area, without reference to what lies beyond, 
while if we are to proceed in ethics at all, we must begin 
with some ideal plan of the whole, since in ethics we are 
not interpreting a foreign nature, but act upon natures 
similar to our own; and since, in the case of conduct, 
there is no such partial concurrence of the rational and 
irrational as in physics, no one of the so-called moral 
modes of behavior being moral when taken separately.^ 
Hence the conclusion that there is no possibility of 
establishing the conception of worth unless we have 
some ideal of the whole in which and in relation to which 
the incomparable worthwhileness of a human being can 
be made good. 

iWe need hardly again remind ourselves that this 
conception of worth, or of man as end per se^ is not a 
mere abstraction, and that our interest in it is not 
academic. Every outcry against the oppression of man 
by man, or against whatsoever is morally hideous, is but 
the affirmation of the cardinal principle that a human 



104 \^N ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

being as such is not to be violated, is not to be handled 
like a tool, but is to be respected and revered as an end 
per se. But what do we mean by end per se, and how 
account for this notion? Does it come into our mind 
like a bolt from the blue, or is it revealed as prefigured 
in the human mind when we follow it into its intimate 
constitution? 

Our knowledge of the world we live in is extremely 
limited — in its details it is confined to the planet we 
live on, extending to the myriads of celestial bodies be- 
yond us only by means of scant generalizations. If we 
have knowledge of only so small a portion, how can we 
frame an ideal of the whole? At the same time we 
must remember that the world we actually know, this 
earth and yonder starry myriads, is in very truth our 
world, the world as it exists for us, a world which with 
the help of data coming to us from the unknown, we 
ourselves have built up on certain constructive princi- 
ples; and that these principles have been found, within 
certain, limits, availing.^ I say availing within cer- 
tain limits. The defeat they meet with beyond those 
limits is due to the intractable elements of juxtaposi- 
tion and sequence, of the time and space manifolds, 
which in themselves are incapable of being completely 
rationalized. 

Now the ideal of the whole is a plan or scheme in 
which the constructive principles of the mind are con- 
ceived as having untranmieled course and unhindered 

^ For a creature endowed with different senses, and having a 
mind unlike our own, the world would be a totally different world. 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 105 

application, and the task of world-building, or rather 
universe-building, is in idea carried out to completion. 

The attempt to present an ideal forecast, or outline 
of the whole of reality, as it would satisfy a mind con- 
stituted like ours, an ideal landscape of this sort, is not 
at all to be confounded with the arrogation of a 'priori 
knowledge. A priori knowledge is supposed to be a kind 
of knowledge, and knowledge of the whole is utterly and 
confessedly beyond our reach. The phrase a priori, too, 
is objectionable and unfortunate for two reasons. First, 
as just said, because it has been supposed to be a kind of 
knowledge. By some theologians men were supposed 
to possess a priori knowledge of God.^ Secondly, be- 
cause the word a priori suggests precedence in time, and 
our knowledge of the human mind and of its irreducible 
capacities comes out only in the course of experience. 
Much that has been called a priori, that is implicit in 
experience, did not become explicit until after prolonged 
experience. The Greek thinkers before Aristotle doubt- 
less thought in terms of syllogism, but it was not until 
Greek science had attained a certain ripeness that Aris- 

^ To deny such a priori knowledge of the obj ect called God is 
not to deny that the production of this object is due to constructive 
principles of human thinking; while, in turn, to assert the functional 
derivation of the God-idea is not to validate that idea itself as per- 
manent and inexpugnable. It may have owed its origin to a perma- 
nent disposition of the mind, and yet be fallible because of the his- 
torical conditions under which it arose and the defective data in 
which it was expressed. By way of illustration we might apply the 
same reflection to the Ptolemaic astronomy. The mathematical 
processes by which this astronomy was constructed may be traced 
to permanent singularities of human thinking, yet the astronomical 
theory of Ptolemy is not on that account a priori true. 



106 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

totle was able to dissect out the logic which had previ- 
ously been employed more or less unconsciously. 

Instead, therefore, of using the term a priori, which 
gives rise to the two-fold misapprehension of an a priori 
knowledge and of temporal precedence, and instead of 
throwing out the child with the bath, that is, of ignoring 
the independent part played by our mental constitution 
in building up experience, and in affording us the con- 
viction of certainty, and of reality, it is highly desirable 
that a new term be found to take the place of a priori. 
The term "functional finality" suggests itself to me for 
this purpose.^ 

My field is ethics. I am entirely desirous of sticking 
to my own last, that is, dealing with such concepts as 
the data of my subject force upon me. I do not wish 
to trespass, or to seem to trespass, on the domain of my 
neighbors. Hence in dealing with functional finalities 
I must deal with them primarily as they appear in the 
field of ethics, that is, in the domain of the actions and 
reactions of human beings upon one another. Irre- 
ducible principia of ethics are the functional finalities, 
which prescribe rules for such intercourse, or better 
which create a scheme of ideal intercourse whereby 

* It must, however, be understood that the formula in which a 
finality is expressed is not itself a final formula. The business of 
definition is precarious, liable to error and dogmatic abuse, and the 
formulas of finality are to be constantly subj ected to revision. Pos- 
sible and even probable abuse, however, does not warrant the neg- 
ative attitude at present taken; it does not justify the revulsion of 
feeling against A Priorism which is just now general. Exaspera- 
tion with absolutism does not of itself justify recourse to the oppo- 
site extreme of pragmatism. 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 107 

the conduct of men shall be measured and determined. 

I must, however, glance for a moment at fields out- 
side my own, for the purpose not of controversy but of 
elucidation; not to deal with the subject matter of my 
neighbors, but to mark off my own more definitely. 
What then, I ask, is the most general expression by 
which to designate the singularities of the human mind, 
the principles on which it acts, its immutable modes of 
behavior, the invariants that recur amid all the complex 
varieties of its processes? The principal invariants are 
the positing of a manifold of some kind, and the appre- 
hending of that manifold as coherent. The manifold is 
not given, but is posited by the mind. The positing is a 
mental function, just as much as the apprehending of 
the plurality as coherent is a mental function. The par- 
ticular manifolds of space and time experience are said 
to be given, but they would not be received by the mind 
were not the function of manifold-positing prepared to 
apprehend them. 

In recent physical science the notion of the manifold 
plays a conspicuous role. Subtle speculations are em- 
ployed to define the kinds of manifold which the 
physicist finds opportune, and the kind of unity of 
which these manifolds are respectively capable. The 
two terms mentioned are themselves the most abstract 
conceivable, and naturally, that which is here taken to 
underlie all the constructive, world-building activity of 
the mind in every possible direction can only be ex- 
pressed in the most sublimated language. But the 
notions themselves, or rather the acts of the mind, the 
functions designated, are rich and replete with concrete 



108 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

utility when applied to subject matter in the different 
fields. 

Wherever we turn we find that the assurance of 
reality depends on the joint use of the two principles 
mentioned, the joint operation of the two kinds of men- 
tal action; that is to say — on the positing of a manifold 
and on the simultaneous apprehension of the subject 
matter to which it relates as coherent, as unified. 

The simultaneity, the inseparableness of the two 
mental acts or functions in regard to the same subject- 
matter is the essential point on which hangs the web of 
the argument here submitted. Thus in geometry space 
must be regarded as a continuum, unbroken, uninter- 
rupted at any point, and at the same time the same 
space must be treated as capable of puncture, of linear 
and superficial delimitations; that is to say, of division. 
That which is one must yet be apprehended as divided ; 
that which is divided, or delimitated, must yet be ap- 
prehended as one. The difficulties that arise spring 
from the vain endeavor to separate the two inseparable 
acts — the act of apprehending the manifold of space 
sub specie pluralitatis^ and the act of apprehending it 
sub specie unitatis. Hence arises the puzzling question: 
How can that which is continuous be divided, how can 
chasms between the parts of space, however infini- 
tesimal, be bridged? Witness the problem of Zeno, 
and the pragmatist solution of it by a demonstration 
that satisfies us indeed as to the fact (which no one 
doubts), but leaves the mental puzzle as before; and 
also Bergson's Method of accounting for division by a 
comparison of the inner and the outer flux, wherein he 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 109 

seems to overlook the difficulty that for the purpose of 
comparison two points must be fixed, one in each flux, 
that is to say, the division in the flux must be regarded 
as already existing. 

In the physical sciences we are compelled to assume 
on the one hand the atomic or granular constitution of 
matter, in other words, manifoldness. On the other 
hand, if "action at a distance" is to be escaped, we are 
bound to assume a continuum of some sort like the 
ether. Again, in the organic world there is the 
manifold of structures and functions, and the unity of 
organism. To whatever object of inquiry we give our 
attention, we find ourselves not only restricted funda- 
mentally to the two functions described, but we dis- 
cover that to their insunderable co-operation we owe 
whatever of truth we possess. 

Now the business of ethics is to define its own sub- 
ject-matter, that is to say the particular kind of mani- 
fold with which it deals, and the kind of unity of which 
that manifold is susceptible. But as I approach this 
first goal of my enterprise, there is one obstacle which 
I must try to remove out of the way of the reader, 
before I can hope to win him to a hospitable considera- 
tion of my conclusions. The jointness or inseparable- 
ness of the two acts out of which certainty or reality 
issues has created all the difficulties. The fact that the 
manifold must be regarded as remaining a manifold, 
unaltered in its character as such, not derivative from 
the One (there is no such One) , and that the unity does 
not contrariwise result from the manifold in the sense 
of springing from or being derived from it; — in other 



110 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

words that we must see the same landscape of things 
and events both sub specie pluralitatis and sub specie 
unitatis — ^has been the stumbhng-block. The history 
of philosophy might be written under the two head- 
ings: 1, monistic systems that undertake, collapsing in 
their futile effort, to derive the world and its plurality 
from the One, as if there were such an One, out of whose 
bosom philosophy might evoke the many (creational 
systems, pantheistic systems, emanation systems, evolu- 
tion systems) ; 2, pluralistic systems that essay, with 
equal lack of success, to explain the unity as somehow 
the offspring of the plurality. 

Why then have these systems flourished? Why are 
these vain undertakings still renewed? The reason is 
that we cannot understand the joint action of the two 
functions, and the very point where enlightenment is 
needed is for us to recognize that no fundamental truths 
can be understood by us, that we can only look at them, 
contemplate and accept them. The point, I say, where 
enlightenment is lieeded is that the habit of trying to 
understand is due to a prejudice, to what may be called 
the superstition of causality, 

I shall have to explain this hardy assertion with some 
care to prevent misconception. Causality, it will be 
objected, is the one thread that leads us through the 
labyrinth of nature. The search for causes enables us 
to become at home in our world by foreseeing events. 
In what sense then can it be permissible to speak of 
the prejudice of causality, nay, of the superstition of it? 
With what warrant prescribe a limit to the aspirations 
of the human intellect to push its inquiries to the farthest 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 111 

limit, even so far as to understand the functional finali- 
ties themselves, if such there be? 

The answer, succinctly put, is this; explaining or 
understanding things means tracing effects to their 
causes, and this is only one mode, a somewhat disguised 
mode, of the joint functional activity of which I have 
spoken. The manifold in this case is that of the tem- 
poral sequence of phenomena, of differences due to 
change of position in time; and the unity established 
between them (as for instance energy, of which the se- 
quent phenomena represent the transformations) is an 
ideal, Active unity, mentally superimposed (real despite 
its ideal or imaginary character, because of the necessity 
we are under to view the sequent phenomena suh specie 
unitatis). That there is nothing in the antecedent to 
compel the sequent to follow has been since the days of 
Hume a commonplace in philosophy. That nevertheless 
there is such a thing as the prediction of eclipses was 
made by Kant the basis of his doctrine of synthesis a 
priori. Be the terms used what they may, what counts 
is the fact that the joint action of two functions, which 
itself is inexplicable, not to be understood, that is, not 
to be referred back to a preceding cause (as if there 
could be such a thing as a cause why we think in terms 
of causality) is the foundation of all so-called under- 
standing. 

Moreover causality is an incomplete example of the 
fundamental functional process. We never do thor- 
oughly understand; we gain a certain relief, a certain 
increased ease of mind by pushing the problem back a 



112 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

step. And what I have called the prejudice of causality, 
is the unwillingness on our part to acknowledge the fact 
that we are face to face, in the case of causality, with the 
inexplicable; that that which helps us partially to un- 
derstand (and serves for practical purposes well 
enough) is in its nature not to be understood, one of the 
modes in which the joint action of the functional finali- 
ties manifests itself. 

An ultimate principle has been defined as one which 
is presupposed in every attempt to account for it. The 
functional finalities of which I speak bear the test of 
this definition. The upshot of it all is that the con- 
stitutive principles of the human mind cannot be ex- 
plained or understood, but can nevertheless be verified. 
And verification, in the last analysis, means exempli- 
fication. If we look at these ultimate truths, whether 
in geometry, in physics, or, as we shall later see, in 
ethics and aesthetics, as enunciated abstractly, baldly, 
we confront them blankly, we are as it were dumb- 
founded in their presence. They seem arbitrarily im- 
posed upon us. And why? Because we are endeavoring 
to understand them. We have acquired the habit of try- 
ing to get hold of truth by referring back to some ante- 
cedent. And therefore we are uneasy and disconcerted. 
But the moment we see them exemplified, as in the con- 
structions of the geometer, in the laws or uniformities 
established by the physicist, etc., we are convinced. The 
subject-matter of ethics is different. The kind of 
exemplification is likewise different. But verification 
is exemplification in ethics as elsewhere ; and this will be 



THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE 113 

found to mean that the life, the ethical experience, must 
lead to the certainty. 

And now we have reached the point where a brief 
discussion of the ethical manifold and its mode of uni- 
fication comes up in proper order. 



CHAPTER V 

THE IDEAL OF THE WHOLE AND THE ETHICAL 
MANIFOLD 

The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, fur- 
nishes, or rather is, the ideal of the whole. The ethical 
manifold is the true universe, not "Universe" in the 
sense in which the word is too laxly used at present to 
designate those fragmentary and in many respects un- 
connected lines of experience which might better by 
way of discrimination be called World. 

The ideal of the whole, as the terms imply, must ful- 
fill two conditions : it must be a whole, that is, include all 
manifoldness whatsoever; and it must be ideal^ or per- 
fectly unified. In such an ideal whole the two reality- 
producing functions of the human mind would find their 
complete fruition. 

Point 1. — The totality of manifoldness must be com- 
prised. 

Point 2. — The connectedness must be without flaw. 

From point one it follows that the ethical manifold 
cannot be spatial or temporal, since juxtaposition and 
sequence lapse into indefiniteness, abounding without 
ceasing, but never attaining or promising the attain- 
ment of totality. Our first conclusion then is that the 
ethical manifold is non-temporal and non-spatial. 

114 



THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 115 

Furthermore it is necessary and decisive for the the- 
oretical construction here attempted to keep sharply 
in view, that the manifoldness may not be derived from 
the unity, or conversely. The manifold remains forever 
manifold. This means that in the ethical manifold each 
member ^ will differ uniquely from all the rest, and pre- 
serve his irreducible singularity. The member of the 
ethical manifold was not created by the One or any One. 
He is not derived as effect from any cause. Causality 
does not apply to the ethical manifold, being a category 
of spatial sequence. The member of the ethical mani- 
fold, or the ethical unit, as we may now call him ( I say 
him metaphorically and provisionally) is unbegotten, in- 
duplicable, unique. In the ethical manifold each infin- 
itesimal member is indispensable, inasmuch as he is one 
of the totality of intrinsically unlike differentiae. A 
duplicate would be superfluous. Inclusion implies indis- 
pensableness ; no member acquires a place within the 
ethical universe save on the score of his title, as one of the 
possible modes of being that are required to complete 
the totality of manifoldness. 

But the reality-producing functions of the mind are 
two, and they act jointly. The same manifold that is 
regarded as the scene of irreducible manifoldness, is 
also regarded sub specie VMitatis, The immense prac- 
tical importance of holding fast to diversity as inde- 
feasible, and at the same time stressing the unity, will 
amply appear in the course of the third Book. It is 

^ Say not part or element, but member, to distinguish the com- 
ponents of the ethical manifold from such concepts as are used in 
mathematics and physical science. 



116 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

this insistence on the two aspects jointly, that distin- 
guishes the theory here worked out from preceding 
ethical philosophies, and will be found to open new 
ethical applications to conduct. It is this insistence on 
the joint action of the two reality-producing functions 
that will enable us to see in the ideal of the whole a 
pattern traced, and to derive from this pattern of rela- 
tions a supreme rule of conduct. If the differences that 
exist among the members of the manifold be slurred 
over, if the indefeasible singularity of each member be 
overlooked, if the many be derived from the One, since 
the One is an empty concept, we shall gain no light upon 
the conduct to be followed by each of the many. It 
is true that our notion of the distinctive difference or 
the uniqueness of each ethical unit is also empty as far 
as knowledge goes. The unique is incognizable. Yet 
we are able to apprehend, and do apprehend, a deter- 
minate relation as subsisting between the ethical units, 
and this relation supplies us with an ideal plan of the 
ethical universe and a first principle and rule of ethics. 
The relation is that of reciprocal universal inter- 
dependence. 

Consider that an infinite number of ethical entities is 
presented to our minds — each of them radically dif- 
ferent from the rest. In what then possibly can the 
unity of this infinite assemblage consist? In this — 
that the unique difference of each shall he such as to 
render possible the correlated unique differences of all 
the rest. It is in this formula that we find the key to a 
new ethical system, in this conception we get our hand 
firmly on the notion of right, and by means of it we 



THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 117 

discover the object which Kant failed to find, the ob- 
ject to which worth attaches, the object which is so 
indispensable to the ideal of the whole as to authenti- 
cate unconditional obligation or rightness in conduct 
with respect to it. It is as an ethical unit, as a mem- 
ber of the infinite ethical manifold, that man has worth.^ 
In accordance with the above, the first principle of 
ethics may be expressed in the following formulas : 

A. Act as a member of the ethical manifold (the infi- 
nite spiritual universe). 

B. Act so as to achieve uniqueness (complete indi- 
vidualization — the most completely individualized act is 
the most ethical). 

C. Act so as to elicit in another the distinctive, unique 
quality characteristic of him as a fellow-member of the 
infinite whole. 

^ The distinction between value and worth must be stressed for 
it is capital. Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most 
objective conceivable. Value depends on the wants or needs of our 
empirical nature. That has value which satisfies our needs or wants. 
We possess value for one another, for the reason that each of us 
has wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying, as in 
the case of sex, of cooperation, in the vocation, etc. But value 
ceases when the want or need is gratified. The value which one 
human being has for another is transient. There are, in the strict 
sense, no permanent values. The value which the majority have 
for the more advanced and developed members of a community is 
small ; from the standpoint of value most persons are duplicable and 
dispensable. Consider only the ease with which factory labor is 
replaced, in consequence of the prolific fertility of the human race. 
The custom of speaking of ethics as a theory of values is regret- 
table. It evidences the despair into which many writers on ethics 
have fallen as to the possibility of discovering an objective basis 
for rightness. 



118 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

A and B are comprised in C. I am taking three 
steps toward a fuller exposition of the meaning of the 
principle. To act as a member according to A is to 
strive to achieve uniqueness as declared in B. To 
achieve uniqueness as declared in C is to seek to elicit 
the diverse uniqueness in others. The actual unique 
quality in myself is incognizable, and only appears, so 
far as it does appear, in the effect produced by myself 
upon my fellows. Hence, to advance towards unique- 
ness I must project dynamically my most distinctive 
mode of energy upon my fellow-members. 

Since the finite nature of man is a clog and screen, 
clouding and checking the action of man viewed as an 
ethical unit, it follows that no man will ever succeed 
in carrying out completely the rule which is derived from 
the ideal pattern. He will invariably meet with partial 
frustration in his efforts to do so, and yet in virtue of his 
ethical character he will always renew the effort. While 
in physical science the recurrence of phenomena sup- 
plies the occasion for exemplification or verification, in 
conduct, or the sphere of volition, not recurrence but 
the persistence of the effort after defeat is at least a help 
to verification, arguing in one's self a consciousness, how- 
ever obscured, of the relation of reciprocal interdepen- 
dence and of subjection to the urge or pressure thence 
derived.^ It is our own reality-producing functions, 
exerted to their utmost, to which we are delivered over. 
Hence the final formulation: So act as to raise up in 
others the ideal of the relation of give and take, of 

^ But the verification itself is the clearer and more explicit vision 
of the ethical relation, as it ought to be. 



THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 119 

universal interdependence in which they stand with an 
infinity of beings like themselves, members of the infi- 
nite universe, irreducible, like and unlike themselves in 
their respective uniqueness. 

The simile that may be used is that of a ray of light 
which has the effect of kindling other rays, unlike but 
complementary to itself. Each ethical unit, each mem- 
ber of the infinite universe, is to be regarded as a center 
from which such a ray emanates, touching other cen- 
ters, and awakening there the light intrinsic in them. 
Or we may think of a fountain from which stream forth 
jets of indescribable life-power — ^playing out of it, play- 
ing into other life, and evoking there kindred and yet 
unkindred life-waves, waves effluent and refluent. 
Whatever the symbolism may be, inadequate in any ^case, 
the idea of the enmeshing of one's life in universal life 
without loss of distinctness — the everlasting selfhood to 
be achieved on the contrary, by means of the cross-rela- 
tion — is the cardinal point. 

I have here to answer one question. By what war- 
rant do I ascribe worth to any human being? Where 
is the head deserving that this ray that streams out from 
me shall light upon it? What man or woman merits 
that he be invested with this glory? Does not the same 
objection opposed to Kant hold with respect to my 
own view? It is true that he found no object at all, and 
sought indirectly to draw from the empty notion of 
obligation the inference that man is an end per se. 
Perhaps it will be admitted that the supremely worth- 
while object has now been found, the holy thing (holy 
in two ways, as being inviolable, reverence-inspiring, 



120 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

holding at a distance those who would encroach: and 
intrinsically priceless as a component of the ethical 
manifold, as indispensable in a perfect whole). But 
this object, you will say, is in the air, or in the heavens, 
and how shall it be made to descend on empirical man? 
My answer is that certainly I do not discover the 
quality of worth in people as an empirical fact. In 
many people I do not even discover value. Judging 
from the point of view of bare fact, many of us could 
very well be spared. Many are even in the way of 
what is called ''progress." And the suggestion of some 
extreme disciples of Darwin that the degenerate and 
defective should be removed, or the opinion of others 
that pestilence and war should be allowed to take the 
unpleasant business off our hands, is, from the empirical 
point of view, not easily to be refuted. I can also enter 
into, if I do not wholly share, the pessimistic mood with 
regard to actual human nature expressed by Schopen- 
hauer and others. To the list of repulsive himian crea- 
tures mentioned by Marcus Aurelius in one of his morn- 
ing meditations, — the back-biter, the scandal-monger, 
the informer, etc. — ^might be added in modern times, the 
white-slaver, the exploiter of child-labor, the fawning 
politician, and many another revolting type. And even 
more discouraging in a way, than these examples of 
deepest human debasement — ^the copper natures, as 
Plato calls them, or the leaden natures, as we might 
call them — is the disillusionment we often experience 
with regard to the so-called gold natures, the discovery 
of the large admixture of baser metal which is often 
combined with their gold. 



THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 121 

It is imperative to acquaint oneself, nay, to impreg- 
nate one's mind thoroughly with these contrary facts, 
if the doctrine of worth, the sanest and to my mind the 
most real of all conceptions, is to be saved from the 
appearance of an optimistic illusion. 

The answer to the objection is that I do not fmd 
worth in others or in myself, I attribute it to them and 
to myself. And why do I attribute it? In virtue of 
the reality-producing functions of my own mind. I 
create the ethical manifold. The pressure of the essen- 
tial rationality within me, seeking to complete itself in 
the perfect fruition of these functions, L e,, in the posit- 
ing of a total manifold and its total imification, drives 
me forward. I need an idea of the whole in order to 
act rightly, in such a way as to satisfy the dual func- 
tions within me. My own nature as a spiritual being 
urges me to seek this satisfaction. This ideal whole, 
as I have shown, is a complexus of uniquely differen- 
tiated units. In order to advance toward uniqueness, 
in order to achieve what in a word may be called my 
own truth, to build myself into the truth, to become 
essentially real, I must seek to elicit the consciousness 
of the uniqueness and the interrelation in others. I 
must help others in order to save myself; I must look 
upon the other as an ethical unit or moral being in order 
to become a moral being myself. And wherever I find 
consciousness of relation, of connectedness, even in- 
cipient, I project myself upon that consciousness, with 
a view to awaking in it the consciousness of universal 
connectedness. Wherever I can hope to get a response 
I test my power. Fields and trees do not speak to me, 



122 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

as Socrates said, but human beings do. I should attrib- 
ute worth to stones and to animals could they respond, 
were the power of forming ideas, without which the idea 
of relation or connectedness is impossible, apparent in 
them. Doubtless stones and trees and animals, and 
the physical world itself, are but the screen behind which 
lies the infinite universe. But the light of that universe 
does not break through the screen where it is made up 
of stones and trees and the lower animals. It breaks 
through, however faintly, where there is consciousness 
of relation: and wherever I discover that consciousness 
I find my opportunity. It is quite possible that the 
men and women upon whom I try my power will not 
actually respond. The complaint is often heard from 
moral persons, or persons who think themselves such, 
that what they call the moral plan of rousing the moral 
consciousness in others will not work. Perhaps the plan 
they follow is not the moral plan at all, but the plan 
of sympathy or of some other empirically derived rule. 
But be that as it may, the question is not whether we get 
the response but whether we shall achieve reality or truth 
ourselves; in theological terms, save our own life, by 
trying to elicit the response. 

And here one profoundly important practical con- 
sideration will come to our aid, namely, the sense of our 
own imperfection, coupled indeed with the conscious- 
ness of inextinguishable power of moral renewal. In- 
stead of attributing the lack of response to the hopeless 
dullness of the person upon whom we labor, a sense of 
humility, based on the knowledge of our own exceeding 
spiritual variability — ^best moments followed by worst 



THE ETHICAL MANIFOLD 123 

moments, imperfect grasp on our own ideals, most im- 
perfect fidelity in executing them — will lead us to turn 
upon ourselves, and far from permitting us to despair 
of others, will impel us rather to make ourselves more 
fitting instruments of spiritual influence than obviously 
as yet we are.* 

* The term "ethical unit" used above should be found useful. The 
chemists have found the concept of the atom useful, though no one 
has ever seen an atom. And all the sciences have recourse to similar 
inventions, — such as the electron, or the ion, or energy regarded as 
a substance, and in mathematics the sublimated, space-transcending 
concepts. Looking through the eyes of science, we are taught to see, 
underlying the grossest forms of matter, imaginary entities v^hich 
are well-nigh metaphysical in nature. Science starts from the 
realm of the sensible, and constructs its super-rarefied devices on 
mechanical models. Then it leaves the field of the intuitively per- 
ceptible, and rises by the path of analogy into realms where the 
notions with which it operates are no longer imaginable. I do not 
wish, in speaking of an ethical, invisible, and unimaginable entity, 
to derive the postulation of this conception from science. The 
ethical concept transcends wholly the field of sensible experience. 
It is not discovered by way of analogy. It is frankly and overtly 
super-sensible. It is not exemplified in the effects it produces in 
the world of volition as the most nearly metaphysical concepts of 
science are exemplified in the field of phenomena by the recurrences 
or uniformities which they serve to account for. The ethical con- 
cepts are not verified by their results at all, not by recurrences of 
phenomena^ but by the persistence of the effort to attain that which 
is finitely never attained, and hy the more explicit perception of the 
ideal itself which follows the persistent effort; for as has been 
shown above, when face to face with fundamental truth, seeing is 
believing. But I allude to these matters in order to show that the 
movement in ethical thinking represented by the system which I 
propose is not contrary to the present-day movement in science, but 
in line with it, though beyond it. It does not ask leave of science; 
it does not base its certainty on scientific precedent ; but neither does 
it expect a veto from the lips of science. The worthwhileness of 



124 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

scientific endeavor itself depends at bottom on the sanction which 
the ideal of the complete carrying out of the reality-producing func- 
tions lends to their incomplete execution in the world of the spac^ 
and time manifold. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE IDEAL OF THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE AND 
THE GOD-IDEAL 

We have seen whence the ideal of a spiritual universe 
arises. It is unnecessary to prove that the universe is 
moral. What it is necessary to verify is that a universe 
exists; for "universe" is an ethical ideal, it is the ethical 
manifold, or, if we distinguish ethical as concerning rela- 
tions between man and man, then we may use the term 
"spiritual" to designate that infinite system of inter- 
dependence in which men as ethical units have their 
place. We begin with the affirmation — Man is an end 
per se. This wonderful affirmation, which the democra- 
cies are darkly and confusedly trying to express in polit- 
ical and social arrangements, constitutes the problem 
of all problems. It is the great datum of ethics, of which 
ethical theory must give an account. All other data or 
problems that have been thrust into the foreground — 
freedom of the will, responsibility, altruistic self-sacri- 
fice — are secondary, in the sense that they depend for 
their solution on a right conception of man as end per se. 
As possessing worth on his own account he is an ethical 
unit. Only as a member of the infinite spiritual universe 
does he possess the two-fold attributes implied in worth 
— inviolabihty with respect to outsiders and indefeasible, 
intrinsic preciousness. Therefore I say that around the 

125 



126 ^N ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

individual, the ethical unit, we build up as a necessary 
postulate the spiritual universe. Man ethically con- 
sidered carries with him this infinite environment. 

Does this universe exist or is it a mere figment? It 
is the product of the reality-producing functions in their 
ideal completion. It is the necessary postulate required 
if the idea of right is to have validity, and the idea of 
right is required by man in so far as he is an agent and 
not merely a spectator of life. The ethical manifold, the 
spiritual universe, exists in so far as there is a right. 

Have we then reinstated the idea of God as existent? 
Not the idea of God as an individual. We have on the 
contrary set aside that idea by affirming that manifold- 
ness cannot be derived from unity, that the positing of 
plurality is just as much a primary function of the 
mind as the positing of unity. We have discarded the 
God-idea as the locus of unity, since the unity subsists 
in the relation of the units. Strictly speaking, we have 
replaced the God-idea by that of a universe of spiritual 
beings interacting in infinite harmony. 

But at this point I must go back for a moment to 
Kant, using his ideas once more as a foil to make my 
own more explicit. Wilhelm von Humboldt said of 
Kant that some of the things he had destroyed would 
never be rebuilt, and that some of the things he had 
built would never be destroyed. 

For more than a hundred years the impression has 
prevailed that among the things forever destroyed by 
Kant are the proofs of the existence of God. He is rep- 
resented as an intellectual giant whose blows have for- 
ever shattered the proofs on which the existence of a 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 127 

supersensible reality rested. Kant's mind was preemi- 
nently scientific. He was the philosopher who made 
explicit the principles underlying Newtonian science as 
Aristotle had made explicit the logic underlying the 
Greek science. His philosophy is essentially agnostic. 
The use that he continues to make of the God-idea can 
be dissociated from his system with advantage to the 
latter.^ 

^ I do not however agree with those who regard the shreds of 
theology remaining in his system as a concession^ not wholly in- 
genuous_, to orthodoxy. He was brought up in the pietistic faith, 
and had probably not entirely outgrown the emotional impressions 
of those early teachings. The noumena^ however, play a part in the 
system itself distinct from the theology, and are not to be taken as 
supersensible realities. They are limiting concepts intended to serve 
as incentives or lures, winning the mind to continue without cessa- 
tion its advance along certain paths within the field of experience; 
but they are not supposed to give any clue as to what is beyond 
experience. That which is beyond the field of experience is simply 
unknowable. Thus the noumenon called "thing per se" is notice 
given to the mind not to be deterred in its proper business of unify- 
ing the space and time manifold by the difficulties which arise when 
the time and space manifold is taken as an ultimate account of 
reality. The thing per se is a welcome to science and not a bar set 
up in its path. 

The noumenon of freedom is an incentive to man urging him to 
act as if he were capable of practicing the law of universality and 
necessity. In fact the phrase "as if" plays a leading role in the 
Kantian philosophy. The noumenon of God, as will presently be 
shown, is afflicted with this conditional "as if* character to even a 
higher degree. We are to assume God in order to look upon the 
vast field of possible experience as if it were unified, as if a being 
who himself stands for unity had been its creator. This assumption 
is supposed to be necessary in order to encourage the scientist in 
his search for the thread of unity, lest he flag by the way. As a 
matter of fact scientists hav« contented themselves with the simple 



128 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

But did Kant indeed destroy the idea of a supersensi- 
ble reality as existent, or are we warranted in undertak- 
ing to build anew the supersensible world.^ ''Du hast sie 
zerstorrt, die schone Welty In deinem Busen haue sie 
wieder" — not indeed in the realm of mere feelings, but 
in the sphere of will. The spell of Kant's shattering at- 
tack still rests upon the intellectual world today. The 
notion of a supersensible reality, if held at all, is held 
timidly, apologetically and is apt to be based on subjec- 
tive emotional need. The wish is more or less admitted 
to be father to the faith — the will to believe is defiantly 
asserted in despair of sound foundations. A scientist 
like Dubois-Reymond enumerates seven world riddles, 
or mysteries that cannot be explained, and after saying 

assumption of the uniformity of nature as necessary to the prosecu- 
tion of their investigations, and have as a rule troubled themselves 
little to hypostasize the notion of unity. Nor has recent progress 
in science been associated with and influenced by the belief in an 
individual Deity. The noumenon of God is unnecessary for science 
while in Kant's ethical application of it it is positively harmful. He 
introduces the God notion as an artificial device for linking together 
happiness and virtue, a device quite inconsistent with the noble aus- 
terity of his ethical system, whatever its other defects may be. 

The noumena, then, are apparitions that appear at the end of 
certain paths in the field of experience, far off where the sky and 
the ground seem to meet. These paths run off in different direc- 
tions. At the end of each is one of these limiting apparitions, and 
the society of noumena is disconnected internally: there is no rela- 
tion of unity between the unifiers. 

^ The difference between "supersensible" and "supernatural" is 
capital. I do not encourage relapse into supernaturalism. The 
supernatural is the opposite of the supersensible. It is an attempt 
to represent in natural or sensible guise what is supposed to be 
beyond the senses ; and the naturalistic representation of the super- 
sensible is then taken not metaphorically^ but literally. 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 129 

that they cannot be explained, he seems to see that no 
alternative remains but to take refuge in resignation: 
"Ignoramus, ignorabimus !" 

That "explanation" is not the only avenue to truth, 
that the referring of effects to their causes is not the 
highest operation of the reality-producing functions, I 
have pointed out in a previous chapter. But Kant, as 
has been said, is supposed to have utterly annihilated the 
arguments intended to demonstrate the existence of 
God, and it will clear up the matter at issue if we con- 
sider wherein he actually succeeded and wherein he quite 
failed. As he himself declares, his method is regres- 
sive; he does not attempt the progressive method path. 
He seeks to ascertain whether by going backward along 
the chain of effects and causes, or of conditions, he can 
somewhere find God as first cause or as unconditioned. 
He does not look forward looking to the ideals of the 
will. He does not enter into the realm of ends, where 
the necessity of determining action in obedience to some 
universal plan or scheme of relations might have forced 
itself on his attention. His approach, like his habit of 
mind, is scientific. He is not primarily an ethicist. 
Proceeding in this manner he shows that the notion of a 
first cause is untenable, and he attacks in particular the 
ontological argument by which every other argument 
supplements itself at the point where it breaks down. 

Did Kant, however, annihilate the Ontological Argu- 
ment? Yes, in the scholastic form in which it was held. 
No, in a form, based on the idea of the ethical manifold, 
in which it can be restated. In the scholastic form it 
rims: "There is such a thing as the idea of a perfect 



130 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

being. Existence is an element of perfection. If the 
perfect being did not exist it would be less than perfect. 
But the ens reolissimum, the perfect being, is present 
as an idea in the mind. Therefore it exists." The 
disproof of this amounts to the curt statement that 
what exists in the mind does not necessarily exist out- 
side of it, or, as Kant put it: *'The idea of 100 thalers 
in the head of a man is one thing, lacking no element 
of conceptual integrity; while the existence of the 100 
thalers in the man's purse is an entirely different mat- 
ter." The evidence of existence, in other words, de- 
pends on the synthesis of the data of sense as arranged 
in the space and time manifold in accordance with the 
categories of the understanding. Existence is temporal 
and spatial. To prove that God exists we should have 
to prove that he exists in the world of the senses. Of 
any other kind of existence we are agnostic. Kant's 
disproof of the Ontological Argument thus depends on 
his agnosticism. 

But suppose that on ethical grounds we find our- 
selves compelled to affirm that there is an object which 
has worth, and that to account for the inviolableness, in- 
dispensableness and preciousness of this object we are 
compelled to give free rein to the reality-producing 
functions, and to place this object having worth as 
a member in a manifold not spatial and temporal but 
infinite: and suppose we say that the existence of this 
worth-endowed object, of this ethical unit with its 
compeers, is as certain as the notion of Tightness is cer- 
tain, have we not then without blame widened the con- 
ception of existence, and placed the Ontological Argu- 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 131 

merit where Kant's disproof does not even touch it?^ 
One more important remark is here in place, sug- 
gested by Kant's designation of God as the ideal of 
reason, and by his designation of our highest nature as 
the rational nature. 

Is "rational" equivalent to intellectual? If it be so, 
then feeling must be classed as irrational, and impulse 
likewise, since neither feeling nor impulse is subject 
to logical rules. And then the war will be on between 
the intellectualists or rationalists and the champions of 
irrational conceptions of life, since feeling and impulse 
actually make up the major part of life, and can neither 
be left out of account nor compressed into intellectualist 
formulas.* 

Plainly, there is a deep misunderstanding between 
the two parties. An error is involved somewhere. It ap- 
pears to consist in assuming that objectivity can be sup- 
plied only by the intellect, in overlooking the fact that 

^ He allows indeed the Ens Realissimum to remain^ and calls it 
the ideal of the reason, the ideal of unity hypostasized, centralized 
in an individual, and somehow harboring within itself all real prop- 
erties whatsoever. But it is quite impossible to conceive how all 
real properties can belong to a single individual. For the 
properties as we know them are incompatible with each other. 
Surely an individual cannot be both great and small, beautiful and 
ugly, of all colors and sounds, etc., etc. Or again if all properties 
were somehow assembled in one individual, since that individual is 
conceived of as an hypostasized unity, it would be impossible to 
speak of a relation between them, and yet upon the relation of the 
differentiae depends the ethical utility of the idea of a supreme 
reality. 

* Compare, for instance, the anti-intellectualistic philosophy of 
Bergson, with its emphasis on planless spurts of energy, the irra- 
tionalist philosophy of Schopenhauer, etc. 



132 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the feelings and still more the volition possess intrinsic 
controls and norms of their own, that Science, the work 
of the intellect, and art and ethics, spring from a conmion 
root, namely, the reality-producing functions. The 
manifolds with which each of the three respectively deals 
are different, the methods of synthesis are different, but 
the root principle, synthesis of the manifold, is identical 
inaU. 

To describe our highest nature, therefore, as the ra- 
tional nature is perilous, since the word rational suggests 
intellectual. Either we must strain the signification of 
reason to include feeling and will, which is contrary to 
common usage, or we should select some other term, such 
as spiritual^ to designate that nature within us which 
operates in science and art and achieves its highest mani- 
festation in producing the ethical ideal. 

Finally, if what has been said regarding the ethical 
manifold holds good, then a genuine philosophy of life 
can only be reached by the ethical approach to the 
problems of life. This has never yet been consistently 
attempted. The approach has been made from the scien- 
tific or the logical side, or as in the case of Plato from 
the sesthetic, or as in modern times from the biological. 
Yet the ethical approach is full of promise. A phi- 
losophy of physical nature may be feasible without it, a 
philosophy of art may be possible without it, but not 
so a philosophy of life. It has not been tried because 
ethics has lain in the lap of theology, which was itself 
corrupted by the attempt to apply to ethical problems 
the inadequate principle of causality in the form of 
creation theories, while again in recent times, by way 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 133 

of reaction against theology, the solution of ethical ques- 
tions is sought for in the empirical disciplines where a 
measure at least of objective certainty has rewarded 
the investigators. Even Kant, who asserted the inde- 
pendence of ethics, actually made it dependent on 
Newtonian science. The great task now is, strictly to 
carry out the idea of the independence of ethics, not in- 
deed as if its principles were unrelated to those of 
science and art, but in the sense of independently inves- 
tigating the problems peculiar to ethical consciousness. 
I am well aware that the attempt made in this volume 
to take the ethical line of approach to a general phi- 
losophy of life, is tentative and defective in a hundred 
ways, nevertheless it is an attempt in a new direction. 

In the next book I shall take up the practical conse- 
quences that follow from the theory here advanced. 
Having delineated the ethical ideal, and discovered the 
invaluable fact that there is a structural plan contained 
in it, we shall see that our actual human duties may be 
derived by applying this ideal scheme to the quasi- 
organic groups already existing in human society. 
There are provocative correspondences to the ethical 
ideal in the social life of men ; otherwise it would be im- 
possible to apply it. There are human groups in which 
a quasi-correlative membership in a common life already 
exists. In the case of each of these groups we find some 
sort of empirical multiplicity which must be studied 
scientifically, and also an empirical motive which may 
be utilized in the interest of developing the ethical rela- 
tion. The family is the first of these groups which offers 
a footing in the world of experience for the ideal. In the 



134 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

family natural affection is the motive ; in the vocational 
group, the desire to express a talent or special gift; in 
the state, patriotism ; in the church, the need felt to inte- 
grate all human ideals. 

Thus the things of earth are to be used as instrumen- 
talities by which we are to become aware of the spiritual 
reality. Only that the disparateness of the physical 
world and the ethical universe should ever be kept in the 
foreground. Every effort to solve the riddle by some- 
how identifying the two has failed. To account for the 
existence of a finite world of indefinite extensibility side 
by side with a universe ex hypothesi infinite is impossible. 
Instead of seeking to explain let effort go toward utiliz- 
ing. Let the world be used instrumentally for the pur- 
pose of verifying the existence of universe. 

For the average man, and indeed for all men, the test 
of the truth of a theory is in the practice to which it 
leads. Abstract metaphysical arguments appeal only to 
a few, and even for them the formula in its abstract 
guise is unconvincing. Look at the mathematical 
figure, and see whether the axioms hold good. Look at 
the sequent phenomena and see whether the so-called 
law of nature is exemplified. And so with respect to con- 
duct: look at the ways of human behavior traced out in 
accordance with the plan of the ethical manifold, and 
see whether such behavior wins the approval of the 
spiritual nature implicit within you.^ 

^ The above exposition is not a transcendental derivation of 
ethics. The ideal of the infinite society is a fulguration out of 
ethical experience, to be ever renewed in it. We build not only our 
world, but our universe. 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 135 



NOTE I 

There are various points at whicK the system sketched in 
the text deviates from current opinion, but in regard to the 
underlying proposition the reader's particular attention is 
called to the remarks on the "prejudice of causality" and to 
the statement that verification is exemplification. 

How can ethical truth be verified? How can we be sure that 
ethical ideals are more than fine wishes, expressing subjective 
aspiration, but having no counterpart in the ultimate consti- 
tution of things? This is the dark doubt that haunts the 
miuds of ethical writers, as well as of the average man. We 
ask to have the things we believe in, the objects of our supreme 
aspiration, verified. How can they be verified? 

I think that we shall see light in this matter once we have 
grasped the thought that verification, both in science and in 
ethics, is nothing more than exemplification. In the case of 
causality, in science, verification does not consist in mere recur- 
rence. For if we find, even by a single carefully guarded ex- 
periment, that a given phenomenon A is the true antecedent of 
B, then we take leave to predict that B will always follow A, 
without regard to the repetition of the sequence in our ex- 

The ethical principle is not a working hypothesis, like those pro- 
visionally used in science. It is the outgrowth of the functional 
finalities. It is a postulate. The specific moral laws, or expressions 
of the ethical principle indeed, are changeable, being the product of 
the principle with the varying empirical conditions of human society. 
The fundamental principle is unchangeable. 

The consciousness of universal interrelation is not to be described 
as mystical consciousness. The identity of the self remains intact; 
it is never lost in the One or the All. The ethical consciousness 
includes indeed the consciousness of other selves related to our 
own, in a kind of superindividual consciousness. But this is reached 
along the sunlit path of action (So act, etc.), and not along the 
dreamy flux of emotionalism or in the silent depths of quietism. 



136 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

perience.^ Indeed, no amount of repetition would justify pre- 
diction. The problem in the case of causality is to determine 
the true antecedent and the true consequent. For at any 
moment there are innumerable phenomena that might possibly 
be antecedents of B. How obtain certainty that A is the 
causal antecedent? By the synthetic process. We assume 
a unity, say energy. We assume that there are differentiae, 
say a certain mathematically determined quantum of mechani- 
cal energy in A, and a determined quantum of thermal energy 
in B. No sooner have these differentiae been mathematically 
determined, than in virtue of the assumed unity of energy 
underlying the differences, we pronounce the nexus to be neces- 
sary. We predict that B will always follow A. 

Causality, therefore, is an example of a synthesis which 
over-arches sequences. The fact that the phenomena are se- 
quent does not affect the principle involved. Whenever we 
contemplate an example of synthesis, that is, defined differen- 
tiae of some sort, and a defined underlying unity of some sort^ 
the mind affirms that reality exists. There are degrees of 
reality. The degree of completeness with which the synthetic 
function is carried out in any instance determines the degree. 

Ethical verifica,tion is likewise exemplification, though in 
another sense. When the ideal plan of ethical relations is pre- 
sented, the ideal plan being a synthesis not of sequences but of 
all co-existent entities whatsoever, the mind assents to this ideal 
plan as representing the complete synthesis or the complete 
reality. The more explicitly and definitely the relation between 

® The frequent recurrence gives us a sense of safety in expecting 
the consequent on the appearance of the antecedent. But the sense 
of safety should not be confounded with the sense of the certainty. 
We expect that day will follow night, because it has followed innu- 
merable times. But no amount of repetition can warrant the asser- 
tion that it will and must do so. The Pragmatist view explains the 
sense of safety in expectation, but does not appear to account for 
the certainty in prediction, as for instance in the astronomer's pre- 
diction of an eclipse. 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 137 

the ethical units is conceived, the greater the conviction of 
reality resulting. Now frustration after partial achievement 
has the effect of making more explicit the idea of the plan of 
relations as it ought to be carried out in human life. And in 
this sense I would have the reader understand the main practi- 
cal argument of the book — that frustration is the condition of 
our intensified conviction as to the reality of the supersensible 
universe. 

In virtue of the constitution of our minds we cannot help 
acknowledging as real that which is synthesized. Synthesized 
and real are synonymous terms. Hence the idea of the com- 
pleted synthesis necessarily is the idea of the ultimate reality. 

NOTE II 

The three principal respects wherein Kant has failed to jus- 
tify his affirmation that every human being is to be regarded as 
an end per se, and not to be used as a tool, are: 

1. Out of the bare experience of oughtness, absolute con- 
straint, he seeks to derive personality. Out of the empty 
categorical imperative he seeks to draw a substantive entity — 
a being possessed of worth. 

2. The society of ends per se described by him is not a true 
society, but a collection of atomic individuals juxtaposed. 
The capital flaw in his ethics is here. He begins by detaching 
the individual. He studies the individual, and discovers, or be- 
lieves himself to have discovered, that something happens in 
him (the consciousness of absolute constraint) which entitles 
him to be considered worth while on his own account. 

Next, since the formula of university proposes imitability by 
others as the test of a moral act, all others are called in as con- 
comitants of the detached atom first considered. Each of the 
concomitants in turn is an atomic entity. It is in this mechani- 
cal way that the conception of a kingdom of ends, or a holy 
community, is supposed to be validated. Kant's mistake is 
to assume that an individual regarded as an isolated being can 



138 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

be worth while, can be an end per se. The notion of end in- 
volves relation to others, not mechanical juxtaposition, but 
intrinsic connection. No one is worth while by himself. He 
has worth only as an organic member of a spiritual whole. 
The unique quality which lends him incomparable distinction 
is the creative life which emanates from him and quickens 
cognate but diversely modified life in his associates. 

3. Kant's version of the ethical rule is strong on the side 
of interdiction, but quite inadequate on the positive side. He 
tells us that we are to look on others not merely as means to 
our own ends, but also ends per se. The vagueness is in the 
formula "not merely . . . but also.'* Where the dividing line 
is to be drawn he does not tell. I am at liberty to use the 
services of others in the prosecution of my own interests, as 
they may use mine, since we are social beings and dependent 
on one another. But how far may I go in this direction? On 
this point we are left wholly in the dark. Kant admits into his 
system the so-called natural ends,'' such as wealth, culture and 
the like, gives them leave to abound, only with the proviso that 
they may not overpass a certain limit, — the limit beyond which 
they would interfere with the rights of fellowmen. An instru- 
mental view of wealth, science, culture, as positively promoting 
the ethical end of man, he does not and cannot establish.^ 
But the instrumental view is precisely that in which modern 
society has most at stake, on the working out of which the 
solution of our most pressing problems, — such as the labor 
problem, the problem of the family, the problem of patriotism 
and international relations — is entirely dependent. If Kant 
has failed at this point, as I believe he has, his usefulness as a 
guide in the reconstruction of modern life is seriously dimin- 
ished. What he had set out to demonstrate, the inalienable 
worth of man, remains; but foundations other than his must 

^ A hybrid conception, since in nature there are only happenings, 
but no ends. 

^ His efforts in some measure to remedy this defect in the Doc- 
trine of Virtue are artificial and unconvincing. 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 139 

be found. For the formula "not merely as a means but also 
as an end" I would substitute : Treat every man as a spiritual 
means to thine own spiritual end and conversely . . . treat the 
extent and the manner in which we are to use one another as 
means being determined by the criterion that our exchange of 
services shall conduce to the attainment of each other's ends as 
ethical beings conjointly. 

NOTE III 

I would also ask the reader to consider well the effect upon 
the philosophy of life of the position taken throughout this 
volume that there is no intellectual bridge between the finite 
order and the infinite order. This involves dropping creation 
at the beginning and immortality in its usual sense at the end. 
Creation is an attempt to show how the world, including man, 
proceeded out of the infinite. Immortality is an attempt to 
express how man returns to the infinite. In this volume man's 
dealings with the finite order are represented as having for 
their purpose the achievement of the conviction that there 
verily is an infinite life, a supersensible universe. Creation sys- 
tems, pantheistic systems, certain evolutionary systems, also 
the Hegelian system, are futile attempts to explain the How. 
But explanation is impossible; for to explain means to under- 
stand, and to understand means to trace an effect to its cause. 
And causality is not the kind of synthesis applicable to a cor 
existent totality. 

Among practical consequences note the difference between 
the theistic attitude in fatal sickness and the spiritual atti- 
tude.^ The theist presupposes that there is a God to whose 
will he must patiently submit. But theism is a principle of 
explanation, the God-idea being employed to account for the 
finite order. God is thus made responsible for the suffering of 
the sick as well as for all other evils in the world. Hence the 
very idea which is presupposed in order to produce patience 

^ See Book III for a fuller development of this point. 



140 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

raises up doubts and perplexities, which imperil patience. If 
God made the world why does he permit pain and evil? The 
spiritual attitude, on the contrary, ethically interpreted, does 
not presuppose the idea of a divine order as a dogma, but offers 
it as the product of the experience of suffering itself. The 
conviction that there is in man an essential spiritual self, a holy 
thing, and a spiritual universe, a holy community, are not gifts 
to which we fall heir at birth, or by some sort of revelation bor- 
row from the experience of ancient teachers ; they are a supreme 
good to be arduously worked out by ourselves. And the inter- 
pretation given to the facts of suffering and frustration is that 
they can be used as the means of bringing to birth in us that 
supreme conviction. 

In general it may be said that the purpose of existence, both 
of the individual and of the race, is so to work in the finite 
world as to become possessed with ever greater distinctness of 
the conviction of the reality of the wholly real world, the in- 
finite supersensible universe. 

The attitude of the Christian is other-worldly. He shuns 
intimacy with the finite world and turns his face toward his 
"true home." The attitude herein described is that of hearty 
attack upon the business of life, and close embrace of all the 
partial reality which finite experience contains, with a view 
of thus acquiring in some measure an appreciation of the utter 
reality of which these partial realities are hints and glimmer^ 
ings. 

NOTE IV 

In the case of any new theory, it is true that one must live 
with it for a considerable time before acquiring the habit of 
thinking in accordance with it. The older habits constantly 
crop up and interfere with the correct understanding of any 
new point of view. This is especially so of a new attitude to- 
wards reality. The world seems topsy-turvy to one who learns 
for the first time that grass and the leaves of trees are not 
really green apart from the eye that sees them, that beings with 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 141 

diiferent organs might interpret differently that which stimu- 
lates the human eye to its specific color reactions. The helio- 
centric theory, when first announced by Copernicus, outraged 
naive commonsense. It exacted a new habit of thinking in re- 
gard to the relation of the sun to the earth, — the real relation, 
apprehended by intercalated mental processes being the direct 
opposite of the apparent relation. The sun evidently revolves 
around the earth, nevertheless the truth is that the earth 
revolves around the sun. 

Modem science reveals behind the palpable world around us 
unimaginable fluids, speeds, and physical units which are so 
sublimated in thought as to be barely distinguishable from 
metaphysical entities. The habit of penetrating with radium- 
like glance the concrete screen of things, and of seeing behind 
the screen the company of atoms, ions, etc., may be gradually 
acquired; but the older habit of regarding the palpable and 
visible as the truly real continues to assert itself in conflict with 
the new habit. 

The ethical unit in an ethical manifold postulated in the 
text as the closest, though stUl symbolic, reading of the ulti- 
mate reality, makes a similar demand upon the reader, and 
requires of him in like manner the formation of a new habit of 
thinking, against which the older habits will doubtless continue 
to protest. 

The most obstinate of the older habits that stand in the way 
has been dealt with in the note on causality, namely, — the 
unscientific habit of ignoring the boundaries of science, and 
of taking the method employed in the physical sciences as the 
sole method that leads to certainty. The prejudice of cau- 
sality is probably ineradicable, just as the illusion that the sun 
revolves about the earth persists. But we can at least reach 
the point of realizing that it is a prejudice, and to this extent 
overcome it. If it be synthesis, or the employment in insepa- 
rable conjunction of the two functions mentioned, that for 
the human mind spells reality, then one kind of synthesis 
called causality, that of sequent phenomena, does not exclude 



142 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the ampler, though ideal synthesis, which is carried out in the 
mental production of the ethical manifold. So much I wish to 
add to the statements contained in the text in regard to the 
theory. 

But there is also a new habit to be acquired in regard to the 
practical ethical consequences of the theory. The chief of 
these is the prizing of distinctive difference above uniformity 
or sameness. The ethical quality is that quality in which a 
man is intrinsically unique. The ethical act is the most com- 
pletely individualized act (I ought perhaps to say personalized, 
but the completely individualized act is that of a unique person- 
ality). In brief, the emphasis is here put on that in which a 
man differs from all others, and not on the common nature 
which he shares with the rest ; or rather, since the common na- 
ture is not denied, the stress is put on the intrinsically different 
mode in which the common nature is expressed in him.-*^^ 

The accentuation in current ethical discussion of the com- 
mon nature of man, and the fallacious assumption that the 
common interests are the pre-eminently moral interests, that 
uniformity is the test of ethical quality, is easy to understand. 
It is the reaction of the modern world against feudalism, a 
social system not yet entirely outgrown, in which the empirical 
differences of rank and birth were made the basis of intoler- 
ably oppressive discriminations, and in which it was an ac- 
cepted axiom that some men are baked of better clay than 
others. It is also a reaction against the capitalistic system 
that has taken the place of the feudal, in which wealth is to a 
considerable extent made the standard of social appraisement. 

It is against these false discriminations that the voice of hu- 
manity is now indignantly raised, affirming the moral equality 
of all men. But equality is mistakenly taken to mean likeness in 
the sense of sameness, not in the sense of that fundamental like- 

^^ Difference in the ethical meaning is not to be confounded with 
mere idiosyncrasy, or originality, not to say eccentricity. It is the 
kind of difference which elicits correlated difference in all spiritual 
associates. 



THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 143 

ness on tHe background of which the desirable iinlikenesses 
stand forth. And this notion of equality as identical with 
sameness leads to great practical aberrations. Thus, for in- 
stance, women are not only to be recognized as the equals of 
men, but are to be the same as men, — their education patterned 
on that of men, their specific functions, as far as possible, 
ignored. For unlikeness is supposed to connote inferiority, and 
inferiority is justly repelled as morally intolerable. But aside 
from this one example, the stressing of the common nature, or 
of the basis of likeness at the expense of the oustanding unlike- 
nesses, leads to other leveling tendencies of which modem de- 
mocracies furnish many unpleasing illustrations. Thus uniform 
popular opinion, encompassing the individual on every side, 
penetrates into his inmost thinking, so that he hardly ventures 
to hold to his own judgment against the judgments of the ma- 
jority. And the impulses of the mass tend also to threaten his 
independence in action. There is indeed a certain intoxication 
in the very sense of being submerged in a large whole, a certain 
glad loss of self in great impersonal movements, a certain strain 
of democratic pantheism, as it were, that takes the place with 
some of mystic absorption in Deity. But whatever the value that 
may attach to these upswellings of feeling, it is counterbalanced 
by the circumstance that in proportion as indiscriminate devo- 
tion to society as a whole becomes the paramount motive, the 
suborganisms of society, the family, the vocation and the state, 
in which the ethical personality is ripened, are threatened with 
effacement. Instead of moral equality it were better to use the 
term "moral equivalence." The differences are to be stressed; 
they are the coruscating points in the spiritual life of mankind. 
That every man is the equal of his fellows means that he has 
the same right as each of the others to become unlike the others, 
to acquire a distinct personality, to contribute his one peculiar 
ray to the white light of the spiritual life. 



BOOK III 

APPLICATIONS: THE THREE SHADOWS, 
SICKNESS, SORROW AND SIN, AND 
THE RIGHT TO LIFE, PROPERTY AND 
REPUTATION 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

Three main thoughts should be kept clear: the end to 
be realized, the incongruity of the finite and the infinite 
order, and hence, thirdly, the indispensable ministry of 
frustration in the realization of the purpose of life. 

In regard to the so-called moral end of life, there has 
been much variety and contrarity of teaching. I shall 
touch only upon that aspect of the doctrine expounded 
in the previous book wherein it seems to resemble other 
doctrines, and where a distinct statement of the differ- 
ence is therefore imperative, "So act as to develop 
the faculties of thy fellow-man" is not the rule pro- 
posed. "So act as to develop the so-called good qual- 
ities in the man" is not the rule proposed. The rule 
reads, "Act so as to bring out the spiritual personality, 
the unique nature of the other." Now, in putting the 
matter in this way, we incurred the danger of seeming 
to concentrate attention on the individual as a detached 
being, we seemed to have him only in mind, though it is 
true, in respect to what is intrinsic in him, the irre- 
ducible ethical unit which he essentially is. We must, 
therefore, constantly remind ourselves that the ethical 
unit, while unique, is at the same time an inseparable 
member of a society of differentiated units ; that its very 
distinctiveness consists in injecting, as it were, streams 

147 



148 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of dynamic energy into its fellow-beings. Or, as I have 
elsewhere figuratively put it, the distinctiveness of any 
ethical being consists, so to speak, in emitting a ray the 
color of which is nowhere else to be found, the miracu- 
lous quality of which consists in acquiring this color at 
the very instant in which it causes counter or comple- 
mentary colors to appear in its fellow-being. (I am 
using the words "instant," "miraculous," "ray of light," 
etc., of course, in a wholly figurative sense.) 

We have at last, this is my belief, achieved a positive 
definition of the spiritual nature. The spiritual nature 
is that which forever is social in a supra-social sense, 
as embracing not only human society, but a universal 
society of spirits. The spiritual nature is that of which 
the very life consists in starting up unlike but equally 
worthwhile life elsewhere, everywhere. The spiritual ex- 
perience to get hold of, therefore, is the consciousness of 
this inter-relation. 

The moral end to be realized, in accordance with the 
deductions of Book II, is "So to act upon another as to 
evoke in him, and conjointly in oneself, in the same 
movement and counter-movement the consciousness of 
the interlacedness of life with life, the reciprocal, uni- 
versal, infinite interrelatedness. 

Now, as a fact, we never realize this end. If we did 
we should possess what alone is properly called freedom, 
• — freedom in the positive sense being the exercise of 
power peculiar to ourselves, welling up out of our veriest 
self, and executing the totality of its eflfects. Freedom 
is marked by these two signs: energy coming unbor- 
rowed out of self, and producing the totality of its ef- 



INTRODUCTION 149 

fects. I am free when the thing I do is verily my own, 
when the power released is the power of my essential 
self; and when that power is nowhere checked, inhibited 
or interrupted, so that it produces its due, that is, its uni- 
versal effects. 

An ethical being in an ethical universe would be free. 
The dynamic energy proceeding from it would be abo- 
riginal. And since it would radiate upon every other 
member of the infinite society, it would also produce the 
unstinted plenitude of its effects. Each ethical unit, 
at its station, would be at once the producer and the 
recipient of the totality of life, ^ 

It is apparent from what has been said that the super- 
lative, sublime thing, freedom, is not realizable except in 
an infinite world. And hence that the supreme end to be 
realized by man as a finite being cannot be the full re- 
lease of unique power in himself. But neither can the 
end be approximation. In so serious a business as a 
philosophy of life we ought not to play with words, nor 
delude ourselves with the implication of proximity seem-^ 
ingly contained in the word approximation. For it be- 
ing admitted that we cannot reach the ideal, approxima- 
tion seems to suggest that we come into its neighborhood. 
But the ti"uth is that the more we advance the less do we 
arrive in the immediate neighborhood of the ideal, the 

distance at which it lies becoming ever more remote. 

I 

^ Incidentally it may be remarked that in introducing the category 
of interrelation we remove the objection against freedom which 
remains mimitigable so long as freedom is supposed to be a kind of 
causality, competing with natural causality. Causality is the unity 
of a temporal manifold of sequent phenomena. The concept of 
interrelation is the concept of the unity of co-existent entities. 



150 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The moral end, therefore, for a finite nature, like that of 
man, is just to realize the unattainableness of the end. 
There must be no heaven-on-earth illusions, no resting in 
the development of our inadequate human faculties, and 
no illusions as to approximation. The unattainableness 
of the infinite end in the finite world by the finite nature 
is the Alpha and Omega of the doctrine, as I propound 
it. Only after this truth has been fully faced and recog- 
nized, shall we be in a position to take in the vast sig- 
nificance of the fact that we are nevertheless under a 
certain coercion to persist in our efforts to attain the 
unattainable, and in inquiring into the source from 
which this pressure comes, we shall be led to infer the 
influence in us of an infinite nature enshrined in this 
finite nature of ours. In other words, to admit the un- 
attainableness of the end in a finite world by a finite 
being is the very condition of our acquiring the convic- 
tion that there is an infinite world, and that we, as pos- 
sessing an infinite nature, are included in it.^ 

I have now covered the points mentioned: the end to 
be realized, the incongruity of the two orders, and the 
cardinal importance of frustration as a spiritual experi- 
ence, as a means of spiritual education. 

From this point of view the whole question of how to 
deal with the frustrations of life assumes a new aspect. 
Lessing published his well-known essay on the Educa- 
tion of the Race towards the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury.^ Interest in the subject has since been obscured by 

^See some fine remarks on the unattainableness in Tyrrel's 
Christianity at the Cross-roads, 

^ Die Erzichung des Menschengeschlechts, 



INTRODUCTION 151 

the scientific movement, and especially by the evolution- 
ary philosophy. The latter excludes the idea of educa- 
tion in the proper sense, and substitutes for it a natural 
process, a genetic unfolding. The education of the hu- 
man race, and of the human individual from the spiritual 
point of view consists in a series of eflForts never to be in- 
termitted, but not necessarily following each other in an 
orderly series, aiming to embody the infinite in the finite. 
Both partial success and failure in these efforts are 
instrumental to the achievement of the task of mankind. 
Both serve to make more explicit the character and ex- 
tent of the ideal, while the ultimate inevitable failure 
painfully instructs man in the fact of the incongruity 
of the two orders. The only outcome of human his- 
tory that we can view with satisfaction on a large scale, 
is the same as that which we should regard as the 
best outcome of an individual life, namely, the growing 
conviction and the clearer vision of the eternal spiritual 
universe as real. We might say that that man had lived 
best who on his death-bed could declare with perfect 
truth: "I have achieved the certainty, and in through the 
vicissitudes of my life, that there is a universe." I here 
emphasize again the distinction between universe and 
world. To say that the universe is "good" is equivocal. 
The term "good," as commonly used, describes the moral 
striving of a finite nature, and not the quality that be- 
longs to the spiritual universe and its members, thinking 
of them as ideally we must, as freed from finite limita- 
tion. Of the spiritual universe, we might use the term 
"supra-good," only we should then be careful to add that 
the "beyond good" is to be conceived as lying in the di- 



152 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

rection of the good, while transcending it. Therehy we 
avoid the pitfall of Nietzsche and of others who speak in 
a totally different sense of the "beyond good and evil." 
We read of a man blessing his children on his death-bed. 
The highest type of man is the one who in articulo mortis 
can bless the universe. 

The discrepancy of the finite and the infinite order 
appears on the physical and moral sides. On the 
physical side it thrusts itself upon our attention in the 
circumstance that juxtaposition and sequence are incap- 
able of being unified, or totalized. Space and time and 
that which fills them, matter, are by nature incongruous 
with spirit. On the moral side the incongruity appears 
in the deflecting forces of appetite and passion which 
hinder us in the attainment of the spiritual end and, in 
the fact that our so-called higher faculties are in irrec- 
oncilable conflict with one another. The harmonious 
union of all of them in any individual is a fiction. It 
is impossible to be fully developed on all sides. And 
in addition the social substrata in which the spiritual re- 
lation has to be worked out, are themselves too deeply 
beset with internal contrarieties to serve their purpose 
adequately. The sex relation, for instance, is to a certain 
extent favorable to the achievement of spirituality, that 
is, of living in the life of another ; yet on the other hand 
there are elements in it that defeat this very object. i 

I write, therefore, at the head of such words of coun- 
sel as I can hope to give in respect to the conduct of 
life, the word Frustration, It is understood that this 
word is not used in the pathetic sense. First because 
there is partial achievement, moments in life at which 



INTRODUCTION 153 

the rainbow actually seems to touch the earth. Love and 
marriage, the completing of a beautiful work of art, the 
discovery of a new law of nature, the emancipation of 
an oppressed class, are examples. But these partial suc- 
cesses are presently seen to be partial ; they are followed, 
or even in the moment of triumph, permeated, with the 
sense of incompleteness and the foreboding of new ob- 
scurities and perplexities advancing upon the mind. 
Yet essentially the doctrine is not a melancholy doctrine, 
because frustration, though a painful instrument, is yet 
a necessary instrument of spiritual development. We 
are not open to the reproach of dampening the zest and 
rehsh for life of those who are setting out to try the 
hazard of their fortunes. They shall put forth their best 
effort to succeed, but let them be so guided herein that 
they may meet in the right attitude of mind the disillu- 
sionment which is the condition of the revelation. The 
shadows will and must descend before they can be 
parted, disclosing the landscape of the spiritual universe. 



CHAPTER IT 

THE THREE GREAT SHADOWS: SICKNESS, SORROW, 

SIN 

Having concentrated attention upon the point that 
the end is not the development of any particular faculty 
or assemblage of faculties, but the awakening in man, in 
and through his development, of the consciousness of in- 
terrelation, of life in life, we shall now turn to the three 
great shadows : sickness, sorrow, sin. In the case of sick- 
ness the suffering, however acute, must be made to pass 
over into action. There is a certain work to be done, 
something to be accomplished on the sick bed. What is 
it? I shall briefly review a few of the answers that have 
been given. 

First, the Stoic says : A man in pain is to resist the 
pain by an act of will, thereby demonstrating that his 
essential self is inaccessible to bodily suffering. "If 
there is a pain in thy limb, remember that the pain is 
in thy limb, and not in thyself." Now the fortitude 
of the Stoic is admirable as far as it goes; his counsels 
are bracing and manly. But, because he is a material- 
istic pantheist, the reason he gives for his defiance of 
pain is not convincing. In effect his appeal is rather to 
the empirical than to the spiritual nature of man. The 
spiritual nature is characterized by humility; the ap- 
peal of the Stoic is to pride. Fate with all its sledge- 

154 



THE THREE SHADOWS 155 

hammer blows shall not crush him. Yet the Stoic's pride 
when put to the supreme test does not avail, and the 
proof of it is that at the last it breaks down in suicide. 

We come to a second answer. There is business in 
hand for the sufferer on the sick bed. What is the 
business? To hide the expression of his suffering, so 
that the cloud which rests on him may not cast its shadow 
upon others, obscuring their sunshine. But, we are 
bound to ask, are others always worthy of such con- 
sideration? Is not our sympathetic regard for their 
pleasures, their sunshine, often misplaced? Are not their 
pleasures often selfish and frivolous? The Greeks be- 
lieved that outcries in situations of great distress are 
perfectly legitimate, since they seem to afford a kind 
of relief. Is it not cruel to forbid such outcries? In 
our age the view prevails that it is a proof of moral 
grandeur to suppress the signs of suffering. But the 
cynical question obtrudes itself whether it may not be the 
collective selfishness of the multitude that imposes this 
rule. The common run of men desire to go on their way 
undisturbed by cries that emanate from the sick chamber, 
and perhaps it is on this account that they impose a rule 
of behavior based, not on the principle of human worth, 
but on its opposite. The individual forsooth is not to 
count ; the unhappiness of one is not to interfere with the 
happiness of the greater number ! 

There is, however, another view of the matter possible. 
Everyone carries his own particular burden. When 
tortured by some painful malady, we are apt to think 
that others, because they wear a smiling exterior, are 
therefore free from pain. But often those who seem 



156 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in sound health are in fact as great sufferers as we, or 
even greater. And physical pain is not the only kind 
of suffering. Why, then, should I, for one, add to the 
troubles of others by imposing my own upon them? 
Put in this way, it is plain that there is an ethical ele- 
ment in the kind of behavior that is expected of a 
manly person. But the reason assigned, sympathy with 
the pleasures of others, is unconvincing. Unless there 
be some good to which grievous suffering can be made 
instrumental, there is no warrant for enduring it. As 
for the Stoics, so for the philosopher of sympathy, the 
logical end would be suicide, at least when the pain is 
exceptionally intense. 

There is a third answer. Something is to be worked 
out on the sick bed. What is it? To be purified in the 
furnace, to learn patience and humble submission to the 
inscrutable will of God. Patience is the supreme vir- 
tue. *'Be patient. Oh, be patient," I once heard a dying 
man repeat with touching accents. But patience for 
the sake of what? There must be some object to be 
gained by the patience to make it commendable. I can 
be patient in a storm at sea if I may entertain the hope 
of reaching port. I can be patient in conducting a dif- 
ficult scientific experiment if I may hope that it will 
issue in an important discovery, or prepare the way for 
such discovery by others. I can be patient in sickness 
if I have any reason to expect a return to health. But 
patience for mere patience's sake is absurd. Well, then, 
the third answer is, — patience for the sake of manifest- 
ing your faith and trust in a wise and beneficent Deity. 
Why he has sent this suffering, why he has so made 



THE THREE SHADOWS 157 

the world that it is replete with the agony of sentient 
creatures we do not know. We cannot know. But he 
knows. Trust him, have faith in him: "Though he slay 
me yet will I trust him." 

Here a genuine characteristic of the spiritual attitude 
has been expressed, but the ground on which it is put is 
once more unconvincing. How do I know that there 
is such a being as this wise and loving Deity of whom 
you tell me? By the evidence of his works, by the tes- 
timony of the world he has created, by the life for 
which I am indebted to him. But the world is the play- 
ground of good and evil forces. There is a semblance 
of design; there is on the other hand apparently the 
wildest disorder. The stars in their courses travel with 
incredible celerity in every direction, but no astron- 
omer has ever yet been able to discern a plan in their 
journeyings. Human life is full of sorrow as well as 
joy; and whether there be more sorrow or more joy in 
the lives of most persons, who will venture to say? There 
is kindness, but there is also cruelty. There is coopera- 
tion, and there is merciless competition. There is health 
and bloom, and there is miserable physical decay. At 
present, in my case, suffering and sorrow are in the 
ascendant. The picture of the Deity as fashioned from 
the evidence of experience is dark and bright, cruel and 
kind. If he be omnipotent, why^did he introduce the 
elements of discord and trouble into his creation? Why, 
in particular, does he at present torture me so cruelly? 
In order that I may believe in him despite the evidence ! 
But how can I beheve, seeing that in my own case the 
evidence on the bad side preponderates? Thus the mind 



158 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of the sufferer on his couch of pain gropes in the laby- 
rinth of argument and counter-argument — for the in- 
tellectual processes are often preternaturally acute in 
times of physical suffering — and there is no outlet. In 
a fine spiritual nature there is something which pleads 
that the counter-arguments ought not to prevail. Des- 
perately, by an act of faith, a man lays hold on his 
God. But presently his faith again relaxes, his state 
of mind becomes confused, and unless supported by 
strong impressions received in and retained from child- 
hood on, the third answer will not avail him. 

There is business in hand on the sick bed. What is 
it? The fourth answer, the answer as it appeals to me, 
depends on the very incongruity of the finite and the 
infinite order. Every attempt to explain this incon- 
gruity breaks down, every theodicy is a fiction. To ex- 
plain is to find the cause of effects. But the notion of 
cause does not apply to the relation between the finite 
and the infinite. And of the infinite order itself we 
possess only the plan or scheme of relations. The mem- 
bers of this ideal world are related to one another in 
such a manner that the essential uniqueness of the one 
is to be provocative of the diverse distinctiveness of the 
others. This, as I think, is a very fruitful formula, fur- 
nishing a rule of conduct to be applied to our finite rela- 
tions. But it sheds no light on the uniqueness itself, 
which is forever ideal. What in its ultimate consti- 
tution our spiritual being may be, remains unknown. 
Did we know, were we capable of comprehending the 
infinite order, and seeing things in that supersolar light, 
we might then be able to solve the insoluble riddle, 



THE THREE SHADOWS 159 

the coexistence side by side of the finite and the in- 
finite. As it is, the problem of finiteness especially in 
its human aspect of suffering and evil is impenetrable, 
inexplicable. Buit if we carmot explain suffering and 
evilj we can utilize them for a definite spiritual end. 
And that end is to achieve through the ministry of frus- 
tration and the persistence of the effort toward the un- 
attainable, the consciousness of the reality of the spirit- 
ual universe and of our membership in it. 

The answer, therefore, which I should offer, is based 
on this pivotal distinction between explaining and using. 
And thus the business in hand, the end to be gained, is 
the intensified realization of our spiritual interconnect- 
edness with others, the life in life. To this end we ac- 
cept from the Stoic, though for a reason which he does 
not give, resistance to pain, and from the philosopher 
of sympathy the obligation of not clouding the life of 
others with our shadow, and from the theologian the 
law of patience — and we take a step beyond all three. 

Let me carry this out somewhat more in detail. To 
gain the consciousness of interrelation, there must be an 
object outside of myself of supreme interest to me, en- 
abling me to transcend the ego. Now, pain has the 
opposite effect, that of concentrating attention on the 
ego. Pain builds a prison around us, raises up high 
walls which shut us in. Anyone in great pain is in- 
cessantly reminded of his physical state. In order that 
the mind may pass out of the prison cell and over the 
encompassing wall, there needs to be some object be- 
yond the wall appealing enough to solicit the outward 
movement. This object is the spiritual self of my fel- 



160 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

lowmen. It is my concern for their spiritual self which 
is their highest good, it is my eager wish to reinforce what 
is best in them that works the transcendence of the ego 
and of its pains. In such supreme moments the lesser 
values dwindle into relative insignificance. And what is 
best in others is the same consciousness on their part of 
the interrelation. It is this that I am to awaken in 
them, to strengthen in them by the intensity with which 
I myself realize it. In the case of loving kin and 
friends, they, too, suffer with me. In vain I try to hide 
my sufferings. They divine what I try to suppress ; and 
the more I try to suppress it, the more they suffer with 
me. They suffer not only with the suffering, but with 
the attempt to conceal the suffering. I have seen this in 
the case of a mother at the bedside of her dying daugh- 
ter. They go with me to the brink of life. They enter 
into the anxieties and forebodings that haunt my mind 
as I face death. There may be young children that still 
need fostering care. Dangers to the family may arise 
after I am gone. The more my life is implicated in the 
lives around me, the more as I stand on the edge of life 
will my thoughts be occupied, not with the obliteration 
of my empirical self, but with the future of those that 
survive — ^that best future of theirs which I long to as- 
sure. And they, in turn, if they are fine natures, will 
pass through this inward experience with me. Thus I 
descend into the darkness and the depths, and they de- 
scend with me ; and I am also to rise out of the darkness 
and the depths, and am to gain the force to do this in 
order that I may lift them with me. 

This is the business in hand. I am to draw myself 



THE THREE SHADOWS 161 

out of the depths, to overcome the centralizing, egotiz- 
ing effects of physical and mental pain, in order by my 
effort to make those around me realize the intensity 
with which I feel my interrelatedness with them, and 
thereby to reveal to them the same spiritual power in 
themselves. Plans for the future education of the chil- 
dren, counsels of peace, by way of anticipation for the 
too lonely hours that await the most loving and the most 
beloved, — these things have value chiefly in so far as they 
are insignificant of the indissoluble interlacing of life 
with life/ 

^ I have spoken of the sick bed as surrounded by loving friends 
and near of kin. There are sick beds where the situation is quite 
different, — in the poor wards of hospitals for instance. Neverthe- 
less, the loneliest person is never without certain human relations. 
It may be the pauper in the next bed, the nurse, or the physician, 
to whom his behavior will be of lasting meaning. 

I would add a word as to the attitude of a person who is threat- 
ened with insanity, and who is aware that the disease is approach- 
ing. His last conscious act should be to honor the community to 
which he belongs by voluntarily putting himself out of the way of 
harming them. Not that the physical harm is itself the principal 
thing, but that the wish not to harm physically is the sign of his 
sense of the ethical relation in which he stands to his fellows. Also 
a person threatened in this mv^j ought to be willing to put himself 
in the keeping of others, even of strangers, as being no longer him- 
self competent to judge rightly of what shall be done to him. It is 
true that in accepting the judgment of strangers as a substitute for 
his own he is taking the risk of being treated with insufficient con- 
sideration, and possibly even mistreated. Yet the jeopardy in which 
he thus puts his future, the sacrificial act he performs, is evidence 
of mental nobility at the very moment when mental night is about 
to set in for him. 



CHAPTER III 

BEREAVEMENT 

When we reflect on what actually happens in cases 
of bereavement, we shall find great diversity in different 
situations. It may be that the deceased person has 
led a worthless life, and that the grave is allowed to 
close over him without much regret. Nevertheless, the 
honor due to worth that never appeared in him ought to 
be shown. In the worst cases we may not treat human 
beings like animals. Besides, there are generally one or 
more persons who seem to have an unreasoning natural 
affection for the wretched being, and so he does not go 
wholly without the tribute of tears. Others, like suffer- 
ers from cancer, pass through days, weeks, months of 
acute pain before they die. In their case it is said that 
death comes as a relief, and often the final relief from the 
suffering obscures the loss. 

Again, in most men's lives there is an upper and an 
under side. Though the public career of statesmen, 
poets, artists may be dazzling, yet their faults or ob- 
liquities are probably well enough known to those who 
have seen them at close range. Obituaries are seldom 
truthful. Sometimes, however, the reverse happens; 
men whose names are held up to public obloquy are not 
always as black as they are painted. Their worst side 

162 



BEREAVEMENT 163 

becomes known to the public, yet they sometimes pos- 
sess wonderfully fine traits. 

Very pathetic is the mourning for a baby, and its 
unfulfilled promise, or for a defective child, long a bur- 
den, yet strangely grieved for when its feeble little 
flame of life is extinguished. 

The most poignant sorrow is that which cannot be 
communicated to others or shared by others, because 
the tie severed by bereavement, like that of husband and 
wife, is between two only. The loss by death of a be- 
loved life companion is apt to lead to an inconsolable 
state of mind, because in this relation, when finely inter- 
preted, the empirical and the spiritual appear almost to 
coincide. The ethical rule. Live in the life of another, 
live so as to enhance to the highest degree the possibili- 
ties of another, seems almost no longer a counsel of per- 
fection but an actual experience. Hence the utter grief 
into which the sundering of the tie is apt to plunge the 
survivor. On the other hand, Jonathan Edwards said on 
his deathbed to his wife : "Our relation has been spirit- 
ual, and therefore is eternal." And there is indeed an 
element of eternality in marriage, only it is not the sex 
relation as such that is or can be conceived of as eternal. 
It is not man and woman in their empirical form to 
which this attribute belongs. Marriage is the sign; the 
spiritual relation that which is signified. ^ 

^ In the New Testament, despite the preference expressed for 
celibacy, the relation of the bridegroom to the bride is used meta- 
phorically to represent that of Christ with the church, and among 
the mystics the same figure represents the union of Christ with the 
believing soul. 



164 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

It may be objected that marriage being a tie strictly 
between two, one can hardly think without repugnance 
of an equally intimate, nay, far more intimate, relation 
with all spiritual beings whatsoever. Yet the spiritual 
relation is one in which the ethical being is conceived to 
be in touch with each of the infinite beings that com- 
prise the spiritual universe, pouring its essential life 
into them, and receiving theirs in return. Is not then 
the sign incompatible with and contradictory to the 
thing signified? But it is not of the multitude of mor- 
tal men and women surrounding us that we think when 
we speak of the eternal hosts. From this surrounding 
swarm of mortals, we retreat, taking refuge in the in- 
most privacy which we share with one other only. Yet 
this very inmost intimacy, so far as it is pure, is the 
emblem of that pure intercourse of essential being with 
essential being in which we are related to all.^ 

Following up the subject of bereavement, we find 
the following consolations employed: 

The first to be mentioned is, "Bow to the inevitable." 

^ I call attention to the difference between the view here expressed 
and that of Emerson in the last paragraphs of his Essay on Love, 
where he says: "Our affections are tents of a night. Our warm 
loves are clouds that pass over the firmament of mind with its over- 
arching vault, its galaxies of immutable lights. In the personal 
relations we are put in training for impersonal submergence and 
absorption in God." In my own view the infinite community of 
spiritual beings that takes the place of God consists altogether of 
personalities. Godhead, if you choose to apply that name to this 
infinite society, is not a person but a community of personalities. 
Personality is not drowned in the impersonal. On the contrary, the 
individual becomes a personality through his relation to his asso- 
ciates in the eternal life. 



BEREAVEMENT 165 

I include this because frustration is inevitable, on ac- 
count of the discrepancy between the finite and the in- 
finite order, and because we are to use inevitable frustra- 
tion for the purpose of experiencing the reality of the 
ideal. But without this use in mind, the inevitable pre- 
sents itself as a mere blind necessity, in which we can see 
neither right nor reason, a hostile doom that simply 
crushes us. The psychological effect of the thought of 
an event as inevitable, it is true, is in any case calming, 
but the tranquillity thus induced is a heavy and hopeless 
one. And those who accept the inevitable in this stupefy- 
ing manner often become meaner in their way of living. 
The light of life is for them extinguished. They put up 
perhaps with creature comforts, or with work that mere- 
ly keeps the mind occupied, and prevents it from fret- 
ting the wound, thus allowing slow time to cicatrize it. 

There is, however, a larger way in which a materialist 
may regard the inevitable. The world in his view being 
a vast machine, he may, as it were, identify himself with 
the machine, and thereby rise in thought superior to the 
injury it inflicts on him. But though we can imagine 
someone thus deadening his feelings when he himself is 
the victim, we cannot well conceive of the same remedy 
applying when a beloved person, say an only child, is 
being crushed under the Juggernaut car of the world- 
machine. The great test of one's philosophy of life is 
whether it helps us in the case of those whom we love, 
rather than in the case of the sufferings we eooperience 
in our own person, 

A second consolation is : Remember the universality of 
sorrow. Look around you, behold the vast multitude 



166 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

who are suffering like you ; remember the countless gen- 
erations who have suffered in the past, think of the gen- 
erations to come that will suffer in like manner. Such 
are some of the consolations of the choruses in the Greek 
tragedies. Latent perhaps in this mournful view of the 
facts of existence is another aspect of the matter, 
namely, the uprising from frustration toward ideal 
realization. And in so far as this other uplifting view 
is indeed latent or suggested, the thought of the uni- 
versality of sorrow has an ennobling effect. On the 
other hand, without the explication of what may be re- 
garded as implicit in them the consolations of the Greek 
choruses are inexpressibly saddening. 

A third and active variant of the former consolation is : 
Seek to mitigate the sorrow and trouble of thy fellow- 
sufferers. Appease the passion of thine own grief by 
compassion and the works to which it leads. And by as 
much as activity of any kind is better than passivity, or 
mere feeling, by so much is this third kind of consolation 
better than the ones above mentioned. But at bottom the 
same criticism applies to it. It leaves still unanswered 
the question. To what end this suffering both of others 
and of oneself? Not Why? is the question, but To what 
end? How bereavement may be used so as to bring it 
into relation with the final end of life ? 

A fourth consolation is the popular belief in immortal- 
ity. This is a resort to supernaturalism, and the super- 
natural should ever be distinguished from the supersen- 
sible. Immortality as popularly held involves the con- 
tinued existence in some empirical form of the essential, 
central entity in man. For the suggestion that new or- 



BEREAVEMENT 167 

gans may replace the wornout terrestrial body does not 
alter the empirical character of the conception. The 
new organs are still conceived in some vague fashion 
as similar to those with which we are acquainted. 

Finally, my own interpretation of consolation may be 
set forth in contrast to all these. Again I say that for the 
bereaved, as for the sick, there is business in hand, there 
is a task to be performed, a work to be done. What is 
it? Let me endeavor to explain. The spiritual nature 
of man is incognizable, only the plan of the relations 
between spirit and spirit being given. Yet to think of 
a relation at all we must think of entities or objects 
between which it subsists. Of the spiritual part of 
our fellow-beings, therefore, we are bound to fashion 
mentally a symbolic image, one that shall stand for the 
real object, the spiritual nature, though we are well 
aware that it does not adequately express it. 

When the beloved person is no longer visibly present, 
the work we do upon the symbolic image of him is not to 
cease. We are to review, to summarize the whole exist- 
ence of a departed friend, as we have probably never 
done while he was with us. We are to get the total per- 
spective of his life, to see the fine qualities standing out 
more distinctly; to seize the net result of his existence 
so far as those character traits are concerned which in 
him were most analogous to spiritual traits. This 
image we can now ideally contemplate with the advan- 
tage that none of the actual infirmities of his nature 
can mar it, and that no future events can henceforth 
alter our impression. The work of clarifying the image 
of our friend goes on unimpeded. And our own ac- 



168 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tivity in the process of purifying his image of all that 
was merely fallible in him benefits us in return. The 
effect of this activity of ours on the datum of his life is 
our permanent gain. Thus both what he was and what 
he was not is stimulative. While he lived we performed 
the function of elimination and concentration with a view 
of producing progress in him and in ourselves jointly. 
Progress, induced by us, so far as he is concerned, for all 
we know is at an end. Progress so far as we are con- 
cerned is assured by the activity we continue to expend as 
long as we live on his memory. And the memory, or the 
image, stands for the beloved person. There is real 
mental intercourse wherever there is a movement of one 
mind towards the outgoings of another, even though the 
retroactive relation be suspended. The beloved person 
benefits me, though I no longer benefit him, except in- 
directly so far as in my own life I possibly expiate his 
short-comings and in so far as I bestow on other living 
persons the advantage I receive from my mental inter- 
course with him. ^ 

What, then, is the business in hand? What is the 
work to be done? Plainly to tie anew the threads that 
were broken, to bring it about that the loss, in- 
finitely painful though it be, shall lead to gain, to sub- 
stitute for the mixed relation of touch and sight the 
purely spiritual relation. 

One more remark must be made in connection with the 
above. There is at present a tendency to dishonor the 

^ I have real intercourse with Aristotle and Kant^ as the outgoings 
of their minds are still effectual in me — more vital intercourse than 
with many of those who surround me. 



BEREAVEMENT 169 

past in comparison with the future. Interest seems to lie 
in what lies ahead. Hence a breathless, forward-urging 
mood. One consequence of this is that the dead are less 
honored than of old. Within a single generation, for 
instance, I have seen not a few eminent persons in the 
city of New York pass away who up to the time of 
their death and in their obituaries were greatly and 
justly praised. I have hardly ever seen their names 
publicly mentioned since. Already they seem prac- 
tically forgotten. In our national history likewise only 
a few of the most eminent are remembered. In like 
manner in families, the names even of father and mother 
are seldom mentioned by their surviving adult children, 
and ancestors at second remove are barely remembered. 
Now excessive reverence for the past, as in China, is a 
mark of stationariness. A retrospective point of view is 
inconsistent with progress. Our face must necessarily 
be turned toward the future. And yet forgetfulness 
of those human beings whom we have known, and who 
represented to us while they lived much of the best that 
life had to give, seems inhuman and incredible. It is 
true that I have drawn a sharp distinction between the 
empirical selves and those spiritual selves which the 
former for a time enshrined. The empirical selves have 
now disappeared. The gleam of love in the eye, the luster 
of beauty, whether of form or of expression, that 
touched for a season the sacred features, have vanished. 
On the other hand, the spiritual self as a member of the 
spiritual universe is confessedly past knowing and past 
imagining. On what object then shall memory dwell? 
It may dwell on the empirical self in so far as it was the 



170 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

sign of the thing signified, in so far as the being we knew 
and loved was to us convincing of the reality of that 
spiritual world which itself is incognizable by sense or 
mind. The greatest boon any human being can confer 
on another is to serve him in attaining the end for which 
he exists ; and the supreme end for us all is the realization 
of our interrelation with the infinite community of spirits. 
The woman whom we say we loved, we loved precisely 
because she revealed to us that spiritual galaxy — ^because 
she was a Beatrice, ascending with us, and opening to 
our sight the eternal expanses. 



CHAPTER IV; 

THE SHADOW OF SIN 

If any term in the moral vocabulary stands in need 
of strict redefinition, it is sin. Three elements com- 
bine to complete the idea of sin : first, that the deed was 
one that ought not to have been done, not so much be- 
cause of its painful consequences to others or to self, or 
to both, or> by repercussion on society as a whole; but 
because it was opposed to what is intrinsically right : in 
other words, because it contravened the kind of inter- 
relation which would exist in its purity in the ethical 
manifold. 

Secondly, the idea of sin implies that the sinner him- 
self is the doer of the deed, or that there is to this extent 
freedom of the wilL I do not say that he is the cause of 
which the deed is the effect. Causality appertains to 
sequent phenomena. As regards freedom of the will, the 
distinction between the category of interdependence and 
that of causality is vital. A long series of causes, such as 
bad heredity, bad environment, etc., may have led A to 
determine to murder B. ^ 

^ The category of interdependence implies tliat the lines of energy 
between A and B cross, so that A is subject to B*s influence, B sub- 
ject to A's influence, simultaneously. The simultaneity of the rela- 
tion distinguishes the category of interdependence from that of 
causality. 

171 



172 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The notion of the freedom of the will as here 
viewed signifies that no matter what the causal series 
may have been which leads up to the act, when the act 
itself is about to be performed, when B is about to 
experience the effect of A as cause, in that moment the 
relation of interdependence between A and B ought to 
arise before the mind of A and withhold him from 
completing his evil purpose. 

Thirdly, it is characteristic of sin that the fuller 
knowledge that the harmful deed is sinful comes after 
the act, — that it is the Fruit of the Tree, the enlighten- 
ment of the eyes. As the serpent said: "If ye eat of 
the fruit ye shall be as gods." 

Many a man has done what is called evil, and done 
it most deliberately, knowing evil as evil. Remember 
the career of a Csesar Borgia, the extermination of the 
Caribbean Indians by the Spaniards, the outrages on 
women perpetrated during the present war, the ex- 
ploitation of human labor practiced on a large 
scale among the civilized nations. That the blackest 
crimes may be committed with a full knowledge of the 
horrible consequences to the victims seems hardly to 
admit of doubt. Evil is known as evil. / 

But evil in its character as sin cannot be fully recog- 
nized prior to the act. In this respect the Greeks had 
a certain prescience of the truth when they asserted 
that no one can knowingly commit evil ; only they failed 
to distinguish between evil and sin. A man can know- 
ingly commit evil, but cannot with full consciousness 
commit sin. The knowledge of the sin is the divine elixir 
which may be distilled from the evil deed (''Ye shall 



THE SHADOW OF SIN 173 

be as gods"), and the object of every kind of punish- 
ment should be to extract that pain-giving but ultimately 
peace-giving elixir. 

Above I mentioned the criminal as the extreme type. 
But evils in less formidable guise, though not on that 
account less evil, refined invasions of the personality 
of others, spiritual oppressions, sometimes deliberate, 
often unwitting, are included in everyone's experience. 
And the process of expiation, by which evil is tran- 
scended through the recognition of sin (with its pros- 
trating effect at first, its strangely elevating effect later 
on) is alike applicable to all. The best of men have 
to go through this ordeal as well as the worst. Espe- 
cially is unwitting transgression inevitable. Sophocles 
makes it the text of his philosophy in the CEdipuSj 
though the solution offered is that of Greek enlighten- 
ment and not that of the more profound ethical con- 
sciousness. 

We have next, in close connection with sin, to con- 
sider the tremendous question of responsibility, inter- 
preted from the point of view of our ethical prin- 
ciple. Responsible means answerable. Answerable to 
whom, and in what sense? As commonly understood, 
it means answerable to God the Law-giver, to God re- 
garded as the Author of the moral law. God is likened 
to a sovereign. Any infraction of his law is an of- 
fense against the sovereign. Answerable means sub- 
ject to the pains and penalties which it suits the sov- 
ereign to annex to moral offences. There is no in- 
trinsic connection implied between pain and redemption. 
The pain is supposed to break the will of the offender, 



174 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

or to mellow him, so that he will in future obey the 
mandates of the sovereign without a murmur. 

Again, responsibility may mean responsibility to so- 
ciety. Crime is infectious. A fissure opening at any 
one point in the dykes erected against crime may let in 
a flood. The social order as a whole is threatened in 
every single violation of law. The offender must an- 
swer for his defiance of the public will by being sub- 
jected to the pains or penalties which society annexes 
to his crime. The object is the same as before, to break 
him into submission, to fit or force him into the social 
mould, to make him harmless, or if possible what is 
called a "useful citizen." No internal redemptive 
change in the nature of the evildoer is contem- 
plated, except as it may be necessary to lead him to a 
useful or at least a harmless life. The antisocial atti- 
tude is to be replaced by the social attitude. Appeals 
to enlightened self-interest, and to the sympathies are 
conmionly thought sufficient for this purpose. 

Thirdly, responsibility means responsible to oneself. 
There is an inner forum, a tribunal in which the spirit- 
ual self sits in judgment on the empirical self. Con- 
science, the voice of this spiritual self, pronounces the 
verdict. ( Cf . the passages in Kant in which this figure 
of speech is used.) These are metaphorical expres- 
sions. 

To grasp the meaning of responsibility from the ethi- 
cal standpoint, we must lift into view the concept of 
the task of mankind as a whole, and of the individual 
as a factor in the fulfilment of that task. This intro- 



I 



THE SHADOW OF SIN 175 

duces a momentous turn into the discussion of the sub- 
ject. 

The task of mankind is to arrive through its com- 
merce with the finite world, through its unremitting 
efforts to incorporate the infinite plan within the sphere 
of human relations, at an increasingly explicit concep- 
tion of the ideal of the infinite universe; and through 
partial success and frustration to seize the reality of 
that universe. Responsibility means participation in 
this task, sharing its doom, and attaining in oneself, in 
part, its sublime compensation. The evildoer is to 
achieve the knowledge that his evil deed is sin, that is to 
say, that it not only carries with it harm to others and 
indirectly to himself, but that it is the defeat in him of 
the task which is set for the human race as a whole on 
earth. Instead of doing his share in fulfilling this task, 
in gaining a footing in the finite world for the spiritual 
relation of living so as to enhance the life of others and 
thereby his own, he has miserably sought to enhance his 
life at the expense of other life. The knowledge that 
he has so acted sears his awakened soul like fire, but 
it is also the beginning of healing. The transgressor, 
now sees what he did not see before. He sees by way of 
contrast the holy pattern of relations which in his act he 
has travestied, the holy laws which he has infringed, and 
in imputing sin to himself for transgressing them, he at 
the same time proclaims himself in his essential being 
holy, that is, capable of executing them, or at least of 
striving unceasingly to do so. It is thus that he opens 
within himself the sources of redemption, unseals the 
deeper fountains of spiritual energy. 



176 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

That man is responsible means that he is answerable 
to do his share in discharging the task of mankind. And 
when he is inwardly transformed by the consciousness 
of the holy laws, and of himself as intrinsically com- 
mitted to holiness, he does thereby advance the business 
of his kind on earth. In him humanity does take a step 
forward on the spiritual road. In him one other mem- 
ber of our race has been lifted out of evil, becoming per- 
haps, from the spiritual point of view, a more advanced 
member of the forward-pressing host than those who 
have never passed through an experience like his, who 
have not been overtly tempted, who have remained con- 
ventionally moral, who have not realized the evil that 
remains unexpurgated within them, and have not passed 
through the cleansing process of self-condemnation and 
rebirth. 

The incongruity between the finite and the infinite or- 
der is the basis of this doctrine of responsibility. Man- 
kind is responsible for seeking to embody the infinite in 
the finite. It fails to do so, but gains its compensa- 
tion. The individual shares this responsibility, but both 
mankind and the individual jointly take a step for- 
ward whenever an evil deed is recognized, branded and 
expiated as sinful. The object of punishment, whether 
inflicted by society or self-inflicted, is to promote this 
regeneration which is the expiation. ^ 

^ This implies that the evil deed shall not be lost sight of, simply- 
forgotten. Compare the inadequate account of repentance as given 
by Goethe in Faust and elsewhere. 



THE SHADOW OF SIN 177 



NOTE 

Evil in its ethical meaning presupposes worth as attaching to 
human beings. To do evil is to offend against worth. To assert 
the worth of man is to view him as one of an infinite number of 
beings, united in an infinite universe, each induplicable in its 
kind. Of this spiritual multitude ideally projected by us as 
enveloping human society only our fellow human beings are 
known to us. The moral law is the law which reigns through- 
out the infinite spiritual universe applied within the narrow 
confines of human society. It is applied within those confines, 
it is spiritual, universal in its jurisdiction. 

The task of humanity as a whole is to embody more and 
more the universal spiritual law in human relationships, and 
thus to transform and transfigure human society. In the New 
Testament we read the expression: "the light of God reflected 
in the face of Christ." The ideal here indicated may be ex- 
pressed in the phrase, The spiritual universe with its endless 
lights reflected on the face of human society! The task of 
humanity is one which can never be completed, one from which 
mankind may never desist. To see evil as sin is to see it as con- 
travening the collective task of mankind, the task of weaving 
the human groups more and more into the fabric of the spirit- 
ual relations. 

To see evil as sin is to see any single act or series of acts 
ideally in their infinite connections. This is what I mean when 
I say that the knowledge of sin comes after the act. I do not 
mean that there may not be before the act a vague conscious- 
ness of the ramified consequences of evil, but that the fuller 
knowledge of it as sin is the fruit of the act. Nor do I mean that 
evil in its deeper significance is revealed to every guilty person. 
The opposite is obviously true. What I mean is that it is 
possible after having eaten of the Fruit of the Tree to gain the 
enlightenment, in other words, to become aware of the intrinsic 
holiness of our nature in consequence of our offense against 



178 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the holy laws. If anyone should ask "Must I then do evil in 
order to gain the enlightenment?" the answer is that this ques- 
tion is an idle one. No one can escape doing evil. If not in its 
grosser forms, then in ways subtler and more complex, but not 
therefore less evil, every one is bound to make acquaintance 
with guilt. He need not go out of his way to seek occasion, 
let him see to it that he improves the occasion when it comes, as 
inevitably it will, to his spiritual advantage. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE TO BE OBSERVED 
TOWARDS FELLOW-MEN IN GENERAL, IRRE- 
SPECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONS WHICH 
CONNECT US MORE CLOSELY WITH SOME THAN 
OTHERS 

The Right to Life 

The thoughts presented above on the subject of sin 
naturally lead over to the next topic, the obligations we 
are under regarding the life, the property and the repu- 
tation of others. The ancient moral laws unquestion- 
ably remain: *'Thou shalt not kill"; "Thou shalt not 
steal"; "Thou shalt not bear false witness." But their 
application is extended and their significance intensified 
by the positive definition which has been given to the 
term Spiritual, 

So long as the mere inviolateness of the human per- 
sonality is emphasized, without any defined conception 
of what it is that is inviolate (the inviolateness without 
the infinite preciousness), there is dangler that the 
physical part of man will be invested with the sacred 
character that belongs to the spiritual, that the two, 
the spiritual and the physical parts, will be identified. 

The result will be mischievous in two ways: First, 
while the act of killing will be reprobated, a kind of 
tabu being attached to bloodshed, the taking of the life 
of f ellowbeings in more indirect ways, or what may be 

179 



180 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

called constructive murder, will be lightly regarded. 
The following case is mentioned by a recent writer. 
The directors of a railroad refused to vote the sum of 
five thousand dollars to provide a certain safety ap- 
pliance for their cars. Soon after an accident occurred, 
in which a number of men were killed. The accident 
might have been prevented had the five thousand dol- 
lars required for the installation of the safety appliance 
been voted. Now the men were undoubtedly killed by 
the directors of the company. As to the difference in 
the degree of guilt in the case of direct and indirect 
murder, there is room for casuistical debate. The 
consequences it is true were not present to the direc- 
tors' minds. But are they not responsible for the very 
fact that the consequences were excluded from their 
view? They were intent on their dividends, and ig- 
nored the endangered lives. But is not this the sub- 
stance of their guilt? Does not moral progress lie in 
the direction of extending the sense of responsibility so 
as to cover the indirect taking of life? Similarly the 
use of poisonous substances in industry, bad sanitation, 
inadequate fire protection, must be stigmatized as in- 
direct murder. The Conamandment "Thou shalt not 
kill" must extend over a far wider area than it has cov- 
ered in the past. ^ 

Secondly, the positive definition of the spiritual na- 
ture enables us to perceive more distinctly that the 
physical part is the means and the spiritual part the end, 
and to draw the necessary consequences. That which is 
means is not to be cherished if to do so would defeat 

^ Vide note at the end of the Chapter. 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 181 

the end itself; hence the physical life is not to be pre- 
served if by preserving it we deny or defeat the very 
purpose which the physical part is to serve. So long as 
men have the tabu feeling about bloodshed, the fact that 
life ought of right to be taken in certain instances will 
seem a hopeless contradiction of the general rule against 
killing. Keeping in mind the spiritual end of existence 
on the other hand, we affirm unhesitatingly that it is bet- 
ter that a man should die than commit a heinous crime. 
It was better for the young girl mentioned in a well- 
known tale, threatened with outrage, and seeing no other 
possible way of escape, to strangle herself with her own 
hair rather than submit. According to the opinion of 
certain scholastic writers on ethics, dishonor resides solely 
in the consent of the soul, and where this is absent the 
mere physical infringement cannot leave a moral stain. 
This is a helpful point of view in regard to the victims of 
the atrocities of war, the inmates of certain Belgian nun- 
neries, and the hapless objects of unspeakable brutality 
in certain Polish villages. The anguish of a pure-minded 
woman who becomes a mother under such circumstances 
is hardly conceivable. And to discriminate between the 
infamy done to her and her own unpolluted soul is a 
plain duty, as well as to relieve the innocent oiFspring of 
outrage from any participation in the guilt to which it 
owes its existence. But the case to which I refer is dif- 
ferent. It is one in which the choice remains between 
voluntary death and submission to intended violation. 
Submission in such a situation argues a kind of con- 
sent, or at least the absence of a sufficient revulsion. 
It is right to kill an intending murderer supposing 



182 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

that there is no other way of preventing him from com- 
mitting his crime, whether the intended victim be one- 
self or someone else. It is not only the life thus pro- 
tected from attack that is saved, but the murderer in 
a sense is saved as well, so far as he can be saved, by 
the intervention. Also the members of his family are 
saved, humanity is saved from moral disgrace in his 
person. The same reasoning applies to the position of 
the extreme non-resistants. They will not, they tell us, 
do a wrong to prevent a wrong. In their eyes to take 
the physical life of another is in every possible instance 
an absolute wrong. They fail to take account of the 
instrumental relation between the physical and the spir- 
itual parts. And on the same grounds, a defensive 
war, a war to ward off aggression, may be theoretically 
justified. But here the application of the theory is 
dubious as well as dangerous. Exceptional cases of 
high-handed aggression that ought to be resisted occur, 
but aggression is rarely, if ever, one-sided. As a rule, 
there is more or less wrong on both sides, and the tangle 
of accusations and mutual recriminations is almost im- 
possible to unravel. Very rarely, indeed, if ever, is 
right altogether on one side, and wrong on the other, 
though predominant right may be on one side and pre- 
dominant wrong on the other. And aside from this, the 
instruments of destruction in modern warfare have be- 
come so monstrous, the efficiency notion applied to war 
has led to such ruthlessness, the attempt to distinguish 
between the civilian population and the armed forces 
has so nearly broken down, that right-thinking persons 
everywhere are now eagerly intent on how to prevent 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 183 

aggression before it can take effect, rather than to resist 
it after it has occurred. 



NOTE 

The casuistical question may be raised whether from this 
point of view we are not all murderers. The amount I spend 
on my house, food, recreation, might if divided prolong the 
life of many a child in the slums. Am I not then actually a 
parasite, that is, a murderer.? It is this shocking scruple that 
has led fine people to live among the poor, and to try to equal- 
ize their mode of living with that prevailing in the environment. 
The motive is noble, though as a matter of fact they may never 
succeed in doing what they set out to do because they never 
actually touch bottom. There are always depths of poverty to 
which they can not descend. They may spend comparatively 
little, yet that Httle is far in excess of the spending of the most 
indigent. And had they stripped themselves of everything they 
would have been face to face with the reductio ad ahsurdum of 
their method, for they would have abandoned civihzation and 
degraded their human life to the level of the wayside tramp. 

What is inspiring in their example is just the immense 
compassion, the willingness to give up so much. But the 
method itself is not a solution. 

Are we then murderers, all of us ? Perhaps a distinction may 
be drawn between acts which in themselves are hostile to the 
life of fellowmen, like overtaxing the worker, and acts which 
tend positively to maintain the higher values of Hfe, — such as 
the providing of decent shelter, support and education, for the 
members of one's family. It is true that, as Tolstoy warns us, 
we easily slip into indefensible luxury under the pretence of 
maintaining the higher values. But this does not affect the 
vaHdity of the distinction itself. 

And yet the distinction does not reheve us of what may be 
called our share of the social or collective guilt. The exploiter 



184 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

is chargeable with individual guilt. I who am trying to keep up 
the standard of civilized living within my little sphere am never- 
theless conscious of participating in the social guilt, the guilt 
of a society that has permitted and still permits such misery to 
exist. Well, it does exist, and I can do but a very little to change 
it. Can I then endure the contrast between my own lot and 
that of the greater number. Is it not true after all that if I 
give up the comforts, or let me say the helps to the maintenance 
of the higher values, I should be saving the lives of many chil- 
dren ? Those children are dying because I am not dividing my 
possessions among the poor. Can I stand up and look at that 
fact, at those deaths? 

The only answer which it is possible to give at the point we 
have thus far reached in our exposition is: push on, perfect 
civilization, a way will eventally be found to uplift the masses 
and make them partakers of the future civilization. The other 
alternative, that of Tolstoy, is stagnation. Yet I cannot dis- 
guise from myself the fact that in the meanwhile, while we are 
trying to push on, millions are perishing. This is the true 
"burden of world pain,'' not the sentimental world pain due to 
the fact that one is not having oneself the best kind of a time in 
the world, but the pain caused by the fact that while we are 
reaching forward to help the suffering masses, those masses, 
though composed of individuals morally as worth while as our- 
selves, and many of them doubtless better, if we only knew it, 
are perishing before our very eyes, and that we stand by and 
cannot save them. I have said that in the meanwhile while we 
are trying to push on, millions are perishing. The actual 
moral problem so often overlooked is underlined in the words 
"in the meanwhile." 

There is one pathetic consolation. Envy is not the wide- 
spread vice which it is sometimes represented to be. Those who 
are in trouble take the will very largely for the deed. People 
in the worst conditions are grateful to anyone who shows a real 
desire to help, even if his actual performance does not go very 
far. And there is a still finer trait in ordinary human nature, 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 185 

namely, the tendency to find a certain vicarious relief in the joy 
of the few, provided that their joy be pure. 

The Right to Property ^ 

"Property," according to Blackstone, "is the sole and 
despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises 
over the external things of the world in total exclusion 
of the right of any other individual in the imiverse." 

Orthodox jurisprudence, like orthodox religion, is 
characterized by the absoluteness of its formula. It ig- 
nores the genesis of its concepts in the long line of ante- 
cedent historical development, and it disdains to enter- 
tain the demand for modification, though the circum- 
stances of the time loudly call for it. 

"The sole and despotic dominion which one man 
claims and exercises," etc., may be a fact, but it is not 
a right. Property can only be regarded as a right if 
shown to be subservient to the ethical end, — the main- 
tenance and development of personality. Orthodox 
jurisprudence effaces the end, and treats that which is 
or has been at one time a means as if it possessed a 
sanctity of its own. On the other hand, the empirical 
treatment of jurisprudence, in dismissing the sup- 
posedly absolute means, tends to leave out of sight the 
ethical end, and to treat the social institutions as sub- 
servient to mere convenience. 

The following propositions will indicate the changes 

^ A right is a claim of one person upon another or others, and 
the justification consists in its relation to personality. Rights exist 
hetween persons for the sake of the maintenance and development 
of personality. 



186 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in the conception of the right of property required by 
our ethical theory. 

1. Property is a relation between a person or persons 
and things. There can be no property right in persons, 
but only in things. * 

2. The right of property faces in two directions: 
Toward outside nature and toward fellow human be- 
ings. We have a right over the external things of na- 
ture. We have a right to the services, though not to 
the personality, of fellow human beings. These two 
aspects of the right of property must be kept apart and 
defined. 

It is sometimes held that the human race as a whole, 
as over against nature, has the right of dominion. Na- 
ture, it is said, is our quarry, we can take out of it the 
stones we need to construct the edifice of civilization. 
Nature is our tool. The laws of nature, as science dis- 
covers them, become our servants. Nature offers the 
raw material which we consume. Nature has no rights 
as against man. But I hold that neither has man rights 
as against nature, except in so far as he rightly 
defines the end in the interest of which he makes 
use of nature — ^the maintenance and development of 
personality. 

To suppose that the right of property as the exten- 
sion of personality over things is tenable without re- 

^ Animals, for the purpose now in hand, may be regarded as 
things, being devoid of personality, though certain modifications in 
the treatment of animals are prescribed by the fact that they are 
sentient creatures. But there is no moral interdiction of the invol- 
untary servitude of animals. 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 187 

gard to its instrumental use, to suppose that bare ap- 
propriation of nature as of ^'treasure trove" is a pre- 
rogative of man, is to lend countenance to the false no- 
tion of occupation, or first appropriation, which has con- 
fused the ethics of the subject in the literature of juris- 
prudence, and prevented a right understanding of it. 
If bare appropriation be the foundation, then the first 
comer has a right against his successors, since the exten- 
sion of personality over the thing has been actually ac- 
complished by him, and that is all there is to be said about 
it. Again, on this view, a case may be made out for 
vested interests, that is to say, for those who have success- 
fully appropriated the earth, yes, and the fullness there- 
of, and who having thus effectually extended their per- 
sonality over things without regard to the uses they 
make of their possessions, are then to be entitled to 
remain Indefinitely in secure ownership of them. 

Without an ethical standard, without the notion of 
an end to be subserved, stubborn possession will always 
be able to resist modification, and on the other hand 
attempts at modification will be haphazard. Neither 
the human species collectively nor the individual has a 
right simply to appropriate the things of the external 
world. Neither the first occupier nor the last is en- 
titled to his goods unless he can niake out a greater good 
in the interest of which he should be allowed to possess 
them. 

But the case of primary occupation is academic. It 
occurs on Robinson Crusoe's island and in legal fic- 
tion. Even when the white race invades Africa, it does 
not commonly take possession of unoccupied land, but 



188 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

dispossesses the natives. On what ground does it dis- 
possess them? Is there an ethical standard by which the 
dealings of the civilized nations with the populations of 
Africa can be measured? Is the introduction of the ap- 
pliances of modern civilization, the opening up to trade, a 
sufficient ground for the subjection or the extermination 
of the inhabitants? In this connection it becomes clear 
how urgent a more clarified conception of property- 
rights is. False ideas of this so-called right are to no 
small extent responsible for the massacre of the inferior 
races, and the mutual slaughter of those who covet their 
lands. A proclamation of the Queen of England or of 
the Emperor of Germany, or the signature of an irre- 
sponsible chief to a treaty the meaning of which he 
scarcely understands, transfers millions of subjects and 
thdr territory to one or other of the European powers. 
What right of property have these European powers in 
the territory and the peoples acquired by them in this 
fashion? 

The last example shows that the right of ownership^ 
except in very rare instances, is not in question in respect 
to the dealings of man with nature, but comes into play 
chiefly in the relation of man to his fellows. There are 
competitors to be outstripped, thwarted. There are 
weaker fellow-beings to be subdued. The use of force 
and cunning in acquiring property is well nigh the gen- 
eral rule. Are there any ethical ideals which, if they could 
be realized, might disclose a better way, might bring 
order into this frightful chaos, and abate the conflicts? 
From the ethical ideal as outlined in previous chapters 
this follows: 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 189 

The extension of personality over things is a right in 
so far as things are employed to maintain and develop 
potential personality. The use of the services of a fel- 
lowman is a right in so far as his services are used in 
such a manner as to preserve and develop his person- 
ality as well as that of the user. 

In speaking of the use of the services of others we 
touch upon the social aspect of the property relation, 
and here is the crux of the whole matter. It is com- 
ing to be affirmed more and more that property is a 
"social" concept, that it cannot be explained either as im- 
plying a relation of the individual to outside nature, 
save exceptionally, nor as a relation of the individual 
considered atomistically to other atomic individuals. 
The social tie, it is held, is intrinsic. The nature of man 
as such is social, but the word "social" in current discus- 
sion is very ill-defined, and is commonly understood to 
denote merely the fact of the interdependence of men 
upon one another, without conveying the idea of a rule 
or standard by which the system of interdependence may 
be regulated. Vague notions, such as that of social hap- 
piness, are believed sufficient to take the place of such a 
standard. 

Let me then consider first the bare fact of interde- 
pendence, and see vhat follows from it, and how far it 
will take us. 

Every man has manifold wants for the satisfaction 
of which he depends on others. His wants are legion ; 
his ability and opportunity to satisfy them exceedingly 
limited. It is this cross relation that expresses the so- 
called social nature of man. But the reciprocal de- 



190 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

pendence of men upon one another for the satisfac- 
tion of their wants by no means constitutes an 
ethical tie. The tie between the Greek master and the 
Greek slave, as described by Aristotle, was social, but 
not ethical. The same is true of the tie that united the 
Southern planter to his negro slaves. The relation 
was indeed far more social than that between the mod- 
ern mill-owner and the operatives in his factory, but 
still it was not ethical. The reason is clearly stated by 
Aristotle himself. According to him the slave is a liv- 
ing tool: the purpose of his existence is not realized 
in himself but in his master. He fulfils the end of his 
being by setting free the higher functions exercised by 
his master. But from the ethical point of view no man 
may be regarded as the tool of another. Each human 
being is an end per se, and the highest object of his ex- 
istence is to be fulfilled, not in others, but jointly in 
them and in himself. 

I have just said that the social and the ethical views 
are not synonymous or coincident, as the loose use of 
language in current literature would imply. I go far- 
ther and say that the social and the ethical point of view 
are even on their face contradictory. It cannot be de- 
nied that the natural system of interdependence resem- 
bles that of the body and its members. A hierarchy of 
organs and of functions is apparent in the human body, 
and likewise in the social body. Some men do the low- 
est kind of work. Their function appears to be to pro- 
duce food, clothing and shelter, to satisfy the mere phys- 
ical wants. Some are the hands, so to speak, of society, 
while only a very few effectually represent the brain. 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 191 

The simile has been carried out in detail by well-known 
writers, in both ancient and modern times. It is quite 
true that the artist and the scientist are dependent on 
the manual laborer, just as he in turn is dependent on 
them. But then, consider the difference in the dignity 
of the services they render one another. Was not the 
Greek, who saw things dispassionately as they are, right 
in asserting that, taking society in the large, the purpose 
of human life is fulfilled in the few, and that the greater 
number exist in order that by their inferior services 
they may enable these few to express humanity in its 
highest terms? 

It seems to me that the kind of social arrangement 
contemplated by the great Greek philosophers, and by 
some of the medigeval publicists, as well as by certain 
modern thinkers, is unquestionably social. The fact of 
interdependence is stressed by them. The ethical note 
of equality, or, as I should prefer to put it, equivalence, 
is left out. 

I have endeavored in a recent book to indicate how 
the ethical system may be superinduced over the social 
system.^ Here I am concerned chiefly to mark as 
strictly as possible the distinction between the two terms 
social and ethical. And I must, therefore, at once amend 
my previous statement that property is a social concept 
by saying that it is the concept of a social relation con- 
sidered as the substratum in which is to be worked out 
the ethical relation. 

* See Chapter VII on "An Ethical Programme of Social Reform" 
in The World Crisis, published by D. Appleton and Company, 1915. 



192 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The general consequences of the property concept as 
defined are these: 

1. He who will not work, neither shall he eat; or 
better, he who will not work if able-bodied shall be dis- 
ciplined and trained in such a manner that he will work. 
The fruits of nature do not fall into the lap of man- 
kind. We are riot living in a state of Paradise. The 
human race is engaged in the arduous labor of con- 
stantly renewing the capital on which it subsists. As 
a member of the race, everyone is bound to do his part. 

2. No one has a property right in harmful or super- 
fluous luxuries, since property is the control of external 
things for the maintenance and development of per- 
sonality; and luxury, so far from maintaining, under- 
mines personality, and hinders its development. 

No one has ethically a right of property in great for- 
tunes like those accumulated under the modern system 
of industry. Whatever is in excess of one's needs, 
rightly estimated, is not appropriate to one, not proper 
to one, not his property. Since the present system of 
ownership cannot be changed abruptly, the idea of the 
stewardship of wealth has been suggested to quiet the 
consciences of those who have come to realize that they 
have no moral right to excessive wealth. But the idea 
of stewardship should be held with fear and trembling. 
It is at best a makeshift, a bridge leading over to some- 
thing more sound. It may be so taught and received as 
to seem to justify by philanthropic use the possession of 
great fortunes. But the power to dispose of vast funds 
for philanthropic uses may come to be itself a badge of 
superiority. And even if this be not so, if surplus wealth 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 193 

be used modestly, and with a sincere intention to apply it 
in the best possible way, there is yet no surety that any 
individual owner will have the breadth of vision, the ex- 
perience, the insight, to discharge adequately the func- 
tion of distributor. The defects of his early education, 
habits ingrained in him in the course of his business 
career, may lead him to bestow lavishly in one direction 
while turning a deaf ear to the appeal of other needs even 
more urgent and fundamental. Nothing short of the col- 
lective wisdom of the community, the collaboration of 
the best, can safely direct the surplus wealth avail- 
able for social benefaction, 

3. Everyone is ethically entitled to a share of the 
products furnished by nature and worked up into usable 
shape by his fellows, and also to the direct services of 
fellow human beings, in so far as that share and those 
services are necessary in order to enable him to per- 
form in the best possible way the specific service which 
he in turn is capable of rendering. Our ethical theory 
here supplies us with a principle which takes the place 
of remuneration. There is no such thing as a just re- 
muneration of labor, there is no such thing as a fair 
wage, if the wage be considered as the equivalent of, 
or the reward for the work done. It is not possible by 
any process of calculation to construct an equation be- 
tween labor and reward. The laborer is assuredly not 
entitled to the product of his labor, as the current for- 
mula awkwardly puts it, for it is an entirely hopeless 
undertaking to try to ascertain what the product of any 
man's labor is. In the modern forms of industry, the 
contributions of the different factors engaged in pro- 



194 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

duction are intimately intermingled, play into one an- 
other, and are inseparable. Neither the so-called work- 
ers alone are the producers of wealth, nor the employ- 
ers and capitalists, nor yet both together irrespective of 
the labors of past generations of which they enjoy the 
usufruct. The question, what is a fair wage, or a fair 
profit, is badly posed. There is no such thing as a fair 
wage or profit in the sense of a fair compensation for 
the work performed. 

The proper payment of the human factors engaged 
in production is unascertainable genetically, i,e.j if one 
goes back to the origin of the product. It can only be 
approximately determined by fixing attention on the 
end to be served. And the end in each case is the 
maintenance and development of personality. In other 
words, that is a fair wage which suffices to enable the 
different functionaries cooperating in production each 
to perform his function, or render his service, in the most 
efficient possible manner. The solution of the labor 
question must be along teleological not genetic lines. 
Adequate nourishment as to quantity and quality, suit- 
able dwellings, educational opportunities, etc., are all 
indispensable to the rendering of service, even by "com- 
mon laborers." Specific requirements come up for con- 
sideration with respect to the diff*erent special func- 
tions, and those who perform them. 

My intention in this chapter is to indicate the bear- 
ings of the ethical theory on living questions of the 
day. Nothing is more emphatic in the programmes of 
the working-class than this demand for social justice. 
Nothing is more discouraging than to see the futile 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 195 

efforts made to define social justice by extemporizing a 
notion of fair adjustment which goes to pieces in every 
serious labor controversy. 

One more remark should be made in regard to what 
is meant by property as a relation between persons and 
things considered as a means of developing personality. 
A convenient illustration is the use of a block of stone by 
a sculptor. The sculptor's attempt at self-expression is 
an effort to combine two things in themselves uncon- 
genial, an ideal image, and an external tangible thing, 
the block of stone. The mental image does not leap from 
the mind upon the stone and transform it magically into 
its own likeness. The external thing, the stone, offers 
resistance, and the resistance limits the artist's effort. 
But the limitation itself becomes in time an indispensable 
aid. For the ideal image as at first it started up in 
the artist's mind was vague, and the limitations im- 
posed by the intractable nature of the material compel 
him to articulate the image, to grasp more firmly its 
complex details, and thus to become more surely pos- 
sessed of it. The same is true of the mental thing 
which we call the relation of cause and effect in the 
mind of the scientist, and of his endeavor to impose this 
mental relation on the sequence of phenomena observed 
by him. And the same is again true of that supreme 
thing which we call the ethical ideal, and of the effort 
to embody it in the social relations. The attempt to 
express the ethical ideal in human society inevitably 
hits on limitations, and leads to frustrations. We have 
in our heads fine schemes of universal regeneration. 
We find elements in human nature that resent and re- 



196 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

sist our Socialisms, our communisms. We desire to en- 
large men's moral horizon, the field of their moral in- 
terest, to lead out from the family to the nation, to 
fraternity in general. We presently discover that we 
are losing the benefit of the closer ties. In the very 
process of building we seem to be in danger of destroy- 
ing the foundations, and to be building in the air. In 
this way our formulations of the ethical ideal are tested. 
We are compelled to recast them, and the frustrations 
which we meet with become the means of clarifying and 
articulating the ideal itself, and of enabling us to ex- 
perience more vividly the coercive impulses that go out 
from it. 

The Bight to Reputation 

The ethical rule is to show a sacred respect for the 
reputation of others. In the present discussion intel- 
lectual and moral reputation may be considered sepa- 
rately. 

Under the first bead of intellectual reputation, cer- 
tain points suggest themselves, one of them in regard 
to controversies concerning priority of scientific dis- 
covery. What is the sense of such controversies? 
What difference does it make whether the law of the 
conservation of energy was first enunciated by Helm- 
holtz or by Robert Mayer, or whether the method of 
fluxions was invented by Newton or Leibnitz, — ^not to 
mention lesser contrarieties of claims? Would it not 
argue, on the part of the scientists and their friends, a 
more entire devotion to objective truth if they showed 
themselves indifferent to personal credit? The discov- 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 197, 

ery, the invention, it may be said, is important, not the 
reputation of the discoverer or the inventor. Never- 
theless, such controversies are carried on in a lively 
spirit. And it is usually felt that something more than 
vanity is at stake, that a man is entitled to be named in 
connection with the productions of his mind. 

Such controversies resemble a suit at law undertaken 
to determine a disputed title to some valuable property. 
Plagiarism is different. It is barefaced intellectual 
theft. The title to the property in this case is not dis- 
puted. The plagiarist just steals an idea or a form of 
words in which an idea has been happily expressed, and 
palms it off as his own, hoping to escape with his stolen 
goods undetected. In this case too, it seems, one might 
say the idea is important, not the authorship. Neverthe- 
less, a profound resentment is felt, not only by the 
author, but by the general public, against a plagiarist. 

A rule is ethical when the conduct prescribed is in- 
strumental to the development of personality. Respect 
for reputation is ethical because reputation is a help 
to the development of personality. A man projects 
his mind outward, so to speak, into the productions of 
his mind. As a thinking being he anchors himself in 
outside reality. He transfers himself, as it were, into 
an external thing, — a discovery, an invention, the ex- 
pression of an idea in apt language, — each a thing that 
goes on existing independently of himself. To deny his 
connection with it is to infringe upon his personality, 
to efface his personality in so far as his personality is 
enshrined in his mental product. 

Again, a man's reputation as a scientist or scholar is 



198 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

a prop to his personality as a thinker. A man can 
never be quite certain of the validity of his thinking 
until it is approved by the consensus of the competent. 
To win that approbation is to know that as far as he 
has gone he is on sure ground. He can thence pro- 
ceed, can turn toward new problems with a sense of 
power and a measure of self-confidence not previously 
attained. To rob him of his reputation is to deprive 
him of this invaluable aid to further mental develop- 
ment.^ 

Coming next to moral reputation, we find that the 
ethical rule requiring respect for the moral character 
of others is even more exacting, and that any contra- 
vention of it deserves an even more strenuous reproba- 
tion. The Decalogue prohibits the bearing of false wit- 
ness and this rule is extensible from courts of law to 
ordinary conversation, since the principle involved is 
the same. The Sermon on the Mount menacingly 

^ A remark may here be in place regarding the erudition expended 
in determining which of the writings attributed to some great philos- 
opher like Plato are spurious, and which genuine. Is the time and 
labor spent on such researches worth while? The object in this case 
is not so much to clear or vindicate the reputation of the philosopher, 
or to give him his due, as to rescue for posterity, free from corrup- 
tions, a living and quickening thing to which he has given birth, 
and which the world cannot afford to lose. For the work of a great 
philosopher like Plato is alive, and is valuable because it is still 
quickening. And it is quickening, not because of any positive 
formulation of truth (like a scientific law), but because of the elan 
of the human spirit with which it is vibrant in attacking the eternal 
problems of life and destiny. The same applies to the industry of 
modern critics in collecting material wherewith to facilitate the 
deeper understanding of some great poet like Dante or Goethe. 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 199 

warns against judging others: "Judge not that ye be 
not judged." Buddha enjoins his followers to re- 
frain from malicious gossip, and includes a prohibition 
to this effect among the principal pronouncements of 
his religion. All the great teachers of ethics and re- 
ligion insist on this point, perhaps because the natural 
propensities of men constantly tend in the opposite di- 
rection, and are so hard to restrain. To stab one's 
neighbor in the back, morally speaking, to insinuate 
base motives, to spread damaging reports about him, to 
suggest as possibly and then as probably true rumors 
which one does not positively know to be untrue, to 
allow private repugnance to take the place of evidence, 
— are infringements of the moral reputation of others 
with some of which notoriously many even of the so- 
called best people are chargeable. I do not here speak of 
the grosser attacks, attacks on character inspired by 
envy, rivalry, and greed. The soundness of the rule is 
generally admitted, though its violations are past belief 
and without number. 

But is the rule itself as to moral reputation tenable? 
There is a difference between intellectual and moral 
reputation at which we must at least cast a glance. In- 
tellectual reputation is a fairly safe index of merit; 
moral reputation is not. A man's mind is reflected in 
his intellectual performances. Is the same true of his 
moral character? Is not the moral character an inte- 
rior, elusive thing? The real character escapes the 
eye of the outside spectator and judge; and if this be so, 
why should it be so important a matter to safeguard a 
man's moral reputation, seeing that the reputation he 



200 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

deserves is past finding out? A public official, for in- 
stance, is accused of corrupt practices. He is innocent, 
and his friends and he are indignant at the damaging ac- 
cusations brought against him. But if not guilty of 
the palpable derelictions with which he is charged, yet, 
in view of his opportunities and education, he may not 
be less blameworthy for other acts with which he has 
not been charged, and in his heart of hearts he knows 
that this is so. Why then, this outcry?-? 

Other examples might be adduced. The honor of a 
young woman is attacked by the circulation of atrocious 
rumors, and the reaction at this most sensitive point is 
certain to be extreme when the falseness of the ac- 
cusation is exposed. But is outward decorum, correct 
behavior, always a sure sign of inward purity? 

There is this difference then between the intellectual 
and the moral character. The one can be measured, the 
other cannot. But the reply to these sophistical objec- 
tions is still the same as before. The purpose of the 
ethical rule is to furnish aids in the development of 
personality. The aim in view is not genetic, but teleo- 
logical, not to determine how far in analyzing a man's 
character down to the bottom he may be found to be al- 
ready admirable, but to help him in attaining excellence, 
by progressively advancing toward strength and virtue. 
And moral reputation is a great help to this end. It 
is a prop on which he can lean. He who does right acts 
and has the credit for them, is thereby encouraged to do 
other right acts. And if the inner voice whispers, as 
it is sure to do in the finer natures, that the good opin- 
ion of his fellows, founded on his correct deportment, is 



THE SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE 201 

undeserved, the shame of it may lead him to more de- 
termined efforts to merit the character which, on how- 
ever insufficient evidence, is attributed to him. 

Reputation is sacred because it is an ahnost indis- 
pensable means to further mental and moral progress. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS 

In the last chapter we treated the imputation of evil 
to the innocent. We must now consider the right 
attitude toward actual evildoers. 

In discussing sin, one of the points emphasized was 
that of the moral solidarity between the individual and 
society. The moral interest of the individual is al- 
ways identical with the moral interest of society; and, 
on the other hand, the failure of the individual is a so- 
cial failure. The human race sags morally at the point 
of some particular member of it. 

Again, we defined the task of humanity as the in- 
cessant endeavor to embody the ideal spiritual order in 
the finite sphere of human relations. This effort meets 
both with partial success and with failure. The gain 
derived by the human race from its experiences, its la- 
bors, its sufferings, is that the spiritual universe in its 
unattainable elevation and sublimity is more and more 
revealed to the inner eye; in other words, that by way 
of effort and recoil, and renewed effort and renewed 
recoil from the finite, the infiniteness of the infinite world 
is realized. The essential point is that the boon of real- 
ization must be gained both through partial success and 
failure. Now sin is failure; everyone fails, everyone is 
convicted of sin. There is no exception. In insisting on 

202 



THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS 203 

this point the Christian account is exact. Only it should 
be remembered that sin or failure itself is one of the in- 
strumentalities by which the end of human existence is 
achieved. These preliminaries being understood, cer- 
tain propositions may be brought forward as to the 
treatment of sin, and in particular as to repentance, 
punishment and forgiveness. 

Repentance is recoil, recoil not from the bad act and 
its painful consequences, but from the principle under- 
lying the act. Every kind of sin is an attempt in some 
fashion to live at the expense of other life. The spir- 
itual principle is : live in the life of others, in the energy 
expended to promote the essential life in others. Moral 
badness is self-isolation, detachment. Spirituality is 
consciousness of infinite interrelatedness. 

Punishment, rightly regarded, is a name for the 
steps taken to lead the unrepentant up to the point of 
repentance, i,e,j up to the recoil. Punishment is itself 
criminal when undertaken for any other object. Pun- 
ishment on the vindictive leaj talionis theory, or on the 
bare deterrent theory, is excluded. Reformatory pun- 
ishment as commonly understood is no less inadequate, 
because it restricts the idea of reformation as a rule to 
the externals of conduct/ 

^ I mean that it is usually considered sufficient, for purposes of 
reformation, to bring the wrongdoer up to the average standard of 
law-abiding citizenship, to restore him to the bosom of society as a 
safe and industrious member. Whereas a person who has had the 
searching experience of deep guilt is a candidate for a higher sta- 
tion in the moral scale. Humanity having fallen in him, he should 
be helped to rise to a higher than the average altitude. This at 



204 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The steps taken to lead the evildoer up to the point 
of repentance are to be criticised from this point of view. 
Transient or prolonged separation from ordinary soci- 
ety may be necessary. Severe discipline may be indis- 
pensable. Capital punishment, however, is wholly out of 
the question, since the prevention of the crime now being 
impossible, the achievement of the spiritual gain is 
the point to be aimed at. But the most effectual aid in 
promoting repentance is faith in the better nature of the 
wrongdoer, in that spiritual principle resident within him 
which no crime committed by him can wholly crush, and 
which in the most apparently hopeless cases is still to be 
presumed. But faith in the good that persists in those 
whom we call bad must go hand in hand with the ac- 
knowledgment of the bad that remains unexpurgated 
in those whom we call good. The prison reformer who 
poses as impeccable and righteous himself can never win 
the confidence of the poor human derelicts with whom he 
has to deal nor effect in them the desired change. He 
must share with them the conviction of sin if he would 
impart to them the power of the resilience which he 
experiences within himself. 

Faith in the potential power of goodness resident in 
the evildoer is often confounded with forgiveness. The 
distinction between the two, however, should not be oblit- 
erated. Faith is help proffered from the outside to effec- 
tuate the inner change. Forgiveness is a record of the 
fact that the change has actually taken place, and belief 

least should be the aim. Consider the fact that Jesus selected some 
of his most spiritual companions from among publicans and harlots. 



THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS 205 

that it is likely to be permanent. Forgiveness, in the 
mind of spiritually-minded persons, takes place almost 
automatically when the conditions on which it depends 
are fulfilled. So long as he remains unrepentant a man 
cannot be forgiven, although we may have the convic- 
tion that it is in his power to repent and the earnest de- 
sire to bring about the change in him. Jesus on the 
Cross says: "Forgive them, for they know not what 
they do." Perhaps "open their eyes so that they may 
see the Light" may be the more just interpretation of 
the meaning — ^not "forgive" in the strict sense, for for- 
giveness is not feasible while the heart of the offender 
remains closed. ^ 

Both faith and .orgiveness are factors in regenera- 
tion: the one to assist in accomplishing the change, the 
other to assist in making it permanent. But both the 
faith and the forgiveness are exceptionally difficult in 
the case of our personal enemies. Enemies in the spir- 
itual sense there are and can he none. Every human 
being, even one who has done me the most cruel harm, 
is yet, from another point of view, a fellow member of 
the spiritual society. But to discriminate between the 
two relations in which the man stands to me — that in 
which he is my foe, and the other in which he is my fel- 
low — to be able to put aside as less important the harm 
he has done, the suffering he has forced me to endure, 
and to desire with jperfect sincerity that the recoil, the 

^ Compare the words addressed by Sir Thomas More to his 
judges when sentence of death had been pronounced upon him — 
"For though you have been my judges to condemnation, may we 
meet merrily hereafter in everlasting salvation." 



206 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

transformation, may take place in him, that is the most 
searching test of one's own ethical character. ^ 

The forgiveness of personal foes, when complete, es- 
tablishes a strangely tender spiritual fellowship be- 
tween the pardoner and the pardoned. Both have 
transcended their normal empirical selves, both have 
become partners in a sublime transaction: the one de- 
livered from the clinging of his baser desires, the other 
released from his first crude reaction against evil. They 
will never forget what they thus owe to one another. 
They will continue to walk hand in hand, the one still 
leaning, the other supporting and himself unspeakably 
strengthened by the support he gives. 

Finally, to forgive is not to forget — quite the con- 
trary. To forgive is to remember the past action, but 
to remember it as belonging to the past, as the act 
of one who has since undergone the great change. 
The miracle of the change of water into wine at the 
feast of Cana would not have seemed so wonderful to 
the guests had they not remembered that what was 
turned into wine had before been water. To forgive is 
to remember that what was water has become wine.. 

* Everyone admires a disinterested prison reformer, one who is 
able to see and to call out the good in a so-called bad man ; but it is 
one thing to be disinterested and generous towards men who have 
acted badly towards others, and quite another thing to take the 
ethical attitude towards those who have acted wickedly towards one- 
self. Hence the touch-stone of the character of the prison-reformer 
is to be found in the way in which he behaves and feels towards his 
personal enemies, for instance, towards those who malignantly attack 
him and interfere with the business of prison reform on which he 
has set his heart. 



THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS 207 

And he, too, who has been forgiven may not forget. 
The remembrance of the past he will need as a warn- 
ing and a safeguard. * Not to see the essentially divine 
nature in others, and thus also in one's self is the es- 
sence of the wrong. To teach the guilty to see it is the 
object of punishment. To forgive is to declare that 
what before was ignored is now seen and known. 

* Perhaps I may add a word as to the forgiveness of those who, 
by an extension of meaning, may be called our intellectual enemies. 
By intellectual enemies I understand those whose point of view is 
radically opposed to our own, whose principles and premises, if 
accepted, would render the entire theory of life on which we act, 
and on which we found our convictions, untenable. We are apt to be 
exasperated in listening to them, or in reading the works in which 
they express their opinions. We are apt to feel that there is no 
room in the world in which we live for such ideas as theirs, that 
we and they cannot exist side by side. The bitter feuds of rival 
religious factions, the notorious odium theologicum, and in more 
recent times the thinly veiled animus shown in the controversies of 
philosophical schools are all alike traceable to this source. Racial 
antagonisms, too, are partly to be accounted for on the same gromid. 
There are certain primary attitudes of mind, modes of feeling and 
directions of impulse, the correctness of which we cannot demon- 
strate just because they are primary, and which we all the more 
vehemently assert when we find them disputed. Love your intel- 
lectual enemies, may usefully be added to the stock of moral com- 
mandments ; keep an open and hospitable mind to opinions and ways 
of acting, thinking and feeling which naturally repel you. And 
it will help us to discipline ourselves in this difficult behavior if we 
reflect that the views most contrary to our own are nevertheless sure 
to contain some element of truth which we cannot afford to dis- 
regard, and which will serve the purpose of correcting and supple- 
menting such truth as we may ourselves possess. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE: ACT SO AS TO ELICIT 
THE BEST IN OTHERS AND THEREBY IN THY- 
SELF ^ 

It is difficult to see the potentially divine nature in 
men when masked by the forbidding traits which hu- 
man beings so often exhibit. 

A number of vital considerations will now have to 
be emphasized as pertinent to the subject we are deal- 
ing with. 

The first point is that the character of every person 
contains contrary elements. ^ Let the two kinds of quali- 
ties be called the fair and foul, or more simply still the 
plus and minus traits. The bright qualities, the plus 
traits, are undoubtedly more predominant in some, the 
dark or minus traits in others. But potential plus qual- 
ities exist in the worst characters, and potential minus 
traits may be surmised, and on scrutiny will be found, 
in those whom the world most admires. 

^ Or more exactly act so as to elicit the sense of unique dis- 
tinctive selfhood, as interconnected with all other distinctive spir- 
itual beings in the infinite universe. 

^ The conception underlying Robert L. Stevenson's sketch of 
Jekyl and Hyde is to be taken seriously, and applied without excep- 
tion mutatis mutandis to every human being whatsoever (but see 
footnote p. 76). It is not original with Stevenson. The French, 
who are perhaps the keenest psychologists, long ago invented the 
apercu that everyone has the defects of his qualities. 

208 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 209 

A second point is mentioned as an hypothesis not in- 
deed as yet verified, but I beheve verifiable, namely, that 
certain defined minus traits will be found to go with 
certain plus traits. Wherever bright qualities stand out 
we are likely to meet with corresponddng d^rk qualities 
or dispositions, and conversely. There are, I am per- 
suaded, uniformities of correspondence between the plus 
and minus traits, and it would be of greatest practical 
help in judging others and ourselves if these uniformities 
could be worked out. A kind of chart might then be 
made, a description of the principal types of human char- 
acter, with the salient defects and qualities that belong to 
each. Extensive statistical treatment of a multitude of 
biographies would lay the foundation for such an un- 
dertaking; also sketches of the prominent characteristics 
of nations, like those furnished by Fouillee, would be 
utilized. Also the study of the character traits of primi- 
tive races as partially carried out by Waitz in his An- 
thropology and the character types of animals, so far 
as accessible to observation, might be used for compari- 
son. Instructed in this manner, we should, on coming 
into contact with others, either on their attractive or 
repellent side, be prepared to expect and to allow for 
the opposite traits. And we should learn to see our- 
selves in the same manner ; we should see our empirical 
character as it really is, the dark traits side by side with 
the bright. The courage to wish to know the truth 
about one's self is rare, and when the revelation comes 
or is forced upon us, it often breeds a kind of sick 
self -disgust and despair. The saint at such times in 
moral agony declares himself to be the worst of sin- 



210 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ners. He has striven to attain a higher than the average 
moral level, and behold he has slipped into only deeper 
depths. The minister of religion, the revered teacher, 
the political and social leader, when abruptly shocked 
into self-examination by some evidence of grossness or 
deviousness in themselves, no longer to be glossed over 
or explained away, are fated to go through the same 
ordeal. A profound despondency is the conse- 
quence. It is not only the badness now exposed, but 
the previous state of hypocrisy that seems in the retro- 
spect intolerable. Some persons live what is called a 
double life in the face of the world. But who is quite 
free from living a double life in his own estimate? 
Achilles said of himself axt?os apovpas ("cumberer of 
the ground"). Many a man has echoed that cry with 
a bitterness of soul more poignant than that which 
Achilles felt when he uttered the words. 

Now the principle of the duality ^ of character traits, 
or as we may also designate it, the principle of the po- 
larity of character, applies to our natural or empirical 
character, and our empirical character is not our moral 
character. The distinction between the two will serve, 
as we shall presently see, to rescue us from the state of 
moral dejection just described. But first it is indis- 
pensable to fix attention on the natural character, to 
recognize that we are composite, each and every one of 
us, and that the all-important thing to know is which 
of our plus qualities go with which of tjie minus. Here 

^ The use of the term duality is not intended to exclude the possi- 
bility of multiplicity, but only to call attention to one striking bifur- 
cation of human character. 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 211 

the psychologist can help us. Here a great field is open 
for a practical science of ethology. This would give us 
a more adequate knowledge of the empirical character, 
the substratum in which ethical character is to be 
worked out. 

Point three opens up a great enlightenment in re- 
gard to the whole subject. It is that the distinction 
must be drawn, and ever be kept in mind, between the 
bright and dark qualities and the virtues and vices. The 
bright qualities are not of themselves virtues. The dark 
qualities are not of themselves vices. To suppose that 
they are, to confuse the bright with virtue and the dark 
with viciousnessjis the most prevalent of moral fallacies.^ 

A person is found to be kind, sympathetic, gentle, 
and on this score is said to be virtuous or good. But 
gentleness, kindness, a sympathetic disposition, while 
they lend themselves to thel process of being transformed 
into virtues, are not of themselves moral qualities at 
all, but gifts of nature, happy endowments for which 
the possessor can claim no merit. And sullenness, iras- 
cibility, the hot, fierce cravings and passions with which 
some men are cursed, are not vices, though it is obvious 
how readily they turn into vices as soon as the will con- 
sents to them. 

The question becomes urgent: What then is a vir- 
tue? The fair qualities are the basis, the natural sub- 
stratum of the virtues, the material susceptible of trans- 

* Stevenson falls into this error. He confounds Jekyl with the 
virtuous and Hyde with the vicious side of character. In reality 
the one should stand for the empirical plus traits, the other for the 
empirical minus traits. 



212 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

formation into virtues. In what does the transforma- 
tion consist? When does it take place? The answer 
is, when the plus quality has been raised to the Nth de- 
gree, and in consequence the minus qualities are ex- 
pelled. This result, of course, is never actually 
achieved. The concept here presented is a concept of 
limits. But in the direction defined lies growth and 
continuous development not of but toward ethical per- 
sonality. In public addresses I have often said: Look 
to your virtues, and your vices will take care of them- 
selves. I can put this thought more exactly by say- 
ing: Change your so-called virtues into real virtues: 
raise your plus qualities to the Nth degree. And the 
degree to which you succeed in so doing you can judge 
of by the extent to which the minus qualities are in 
process of disappearing. 

One or two examples will illustrate the pivotal 
thought thus reached in the exposition of our ethical 
system with respect to its practical consequences. To 
raise to the Nth degree is to infinitize a finite quality, or 
to enhance it in the direction of infinity. I shall take 
two examples, one self-sacrifice, the other justice, both 
viewed in their finite aspect as plus traits requiring to 
be subjected to the process of transformation. 

The empirical motive of self-sacrifice may be egocen- 
tric or altruistic. In egocentric self-sacrifice, doing for 
others is a means of exalting the idea of self to the mindl 
of the doer. He uses others, not as sacred personali- 
ties, worth while on their own account, but subtly ex- 
ploits them by benefiting them. He uses them as objects 
by means of which to achieve a finer self -aggrandize- 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 213 

ment. He may indeed go to the utmost lengths of de- 
votion for his friends. He may perform for them the 
most repulsive offices. He may give freely of his 
means, denying himself meanwhile comforts and even 
necessaries in order perhaps to extricate them from pe- 
cuniary difficulties. He may contribute in refined 
ways to their pleasure. As a physician he may watch 
night after night at the bedside of the sick, foregoing 
sleep though fatigued to the point of exhaustion in or- 
der to be at hand to mitigate the pains of the sufferer, 
jeopardizing his own health in order to assist others in 
recovering theirs. Yes, he may even give of his own 
blood to renew their ebbing life. In all this he will 
look for no material compensation. Gratitude, espe- 
cially gratitude expressed in words, is repugnant to him. 
The lofty image of self which he strives to create would 
be marred if any such coarsely selfish motive were al- 
lowed to intrude. All that he requires, but this he does 
inexorably require, is that his beneficiaries shall silently 
confess their dependence on him, that he shall see the 
exalted image of himself mirrored in their attitude, and 
that they shall move in their orbits as satellites around 
his sun. The egocentrism is veiled and easily con- 
founded with the purest moral disposition. But it is 
there all the same, and the proof of it is that the very 
same person who is thus friendly to his friends, and an 
unstinting benefactor to those who pay him the kind of 
homage he exacts, is capable of behaving with almost in- 
conceivable hardness and even cruelty toward others 
who will not stand in this subordinate relation to him, 
or who in any way wound his self-esteem. Sister Dora, 



214 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

serving enthusiastically in a small-pox hospital, while 
neglecting the nearer duties at home, intent on dramat- 
ic, histrionic self -representation, is likewise a palpable 
instance of egocentric self-sacrifice. 

The self is precious on its own account. The non- 
self, the other, equally so. A virtuous act is one in 
which the ends of self and of the other are respected 
and promoted jointly. It is an act which has for its 
result the more vivid consciousness of this very joint- 
ness. Egocentric self-sacrifice errs on the one side, the 
personality of another being made tributary to the em- 
pirical self, despite the actual benefits conferred. Al- 
truistic self-sacrifice errs in the opposite way. In it 
the personality of the self is effaced or made servile to 
the interests or supposed interests of another. Not, let 
me add, to the real interests, for the spiritual interests are 
never achievable at the expense of other spiritual na- 
tures. The wife or mother is an instance, who slaves 
for husband or children, obliterating herself, never re- 
quiring the services due to her in return and the respect 
for her which such services imply, degrading herself 
and thereby injuring the moral chaiacter of those whom 
she pampers. An historic instance of the altruistic er- 
ror on a larger scale is afforded by the Platonic scheme 
of scientific breeding under state supervision, a sugges- 
tion revived in modern times, in which freedom of choice 
between the sexes, and the integrity of the personality 
of those concerned, is sacrificed to the supposed inter- 
ests of the community. Nietzsche's doctrine may pos- 
sibly be regarded as a compound of the two errors de- 
scribed, the Superman representing the egocentrism, 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 215 

while altruistic self-sacrifice, entire annulment of their 
personalities is expected of the multitude. 

It is easy to distinguish the plus and minus qualities 
in the characters of the egocentrist and the altruist: in 
the one case, beneficence combined with hardness ; in the 
other, service of others combined with absence of self- 
respect. 

The second example to be briefly considered is the 
finite trait commonly mistaken for justice. A typical 
illustration of this is presented by the merchant who 
ascribes to himself a just character on the ground that 
he is punctual in the payment of his debts, that his word 
is as good as his bond; or by the manufacturer who en- 
tertains the same opinion of himself because he pays 
scrupulously the wages on which he has agreed with 
his employees. ^ One wonders that so great and pro- 

^ Contract-keeping is peculiarly the moral rule applicable to mer- 
cantile transactions. To apply it without modification to the deal- 
ings of employers and wage-earners is to intrude the mercantile 
standard into the industrial sphere. This is what we are now wit- 
nessing. The industrial standard is only in process of development 
and clarification^ and the accepted mercantile standard is really in 
conflict with it. Among merchants it is of the very essence of their 
transactions that a contract shall not be invalidated,, despite the 
injurious consequences to one or the other party which it may turn 
out later on to involve. The security of commercial transactions 
would be gone if revision of the contract should be permitted when- 
ever consequent loss appears. Again, and this is particularly impor- 
tant, merchants are assumed to be on a footing of equality in dealing 
with one another, equally free in accepting or rejecting a proposed 
contract, equally competent to take care of their respective interests. 
The relation of employers to wage-earners however is not that of 
economic equals, but of the economically stronger with the econom- 
ically weaker. And this difference is of cardinal importance in 



216 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

found a notion as that of justice should be understood 
so superficially, restricted to such narrow limits, and 
that rational human beings should claim to possess so 
lofty a virtue on the score of credentials so inadequate. 
The reason is that the empirical substratum of justice is 
mistaken for the ethical virtue itself. This substratum 
may be described as an inborn propensity toward order 
in things and in relations, a natural impatience of loose 
fringes, a certain mental neatness. Hence insist- 
ence on expKcitly defined arrangements and on 
simple, over-simple formulas. These are favored be- 
cause they keep out of sight the complex elements which 
if considered might introduce uncertainty and possibly 
disorder into the situation. Thus a manufacturer, im- 
patient of looseness, over-rating explicitness, will be led 
to grasp at a formula of justice which reduces it to the 
bare literal performance of a fixed agreement, no mat- 
ter with what unfreedom, owing to the pressure of want, 
it was entered into by the wage-earners, and no matter 

determining the rule of justice as it should obtain in the industrial 
sphere. I do not of course intend to imply that an agreement 
between employer and wage-earners once made should not as a rule 
be kept as scrupulously as that between merchant and merchant. 
What I affirm is that in view of the greatness of the injury possibly 
inflicted upon the weaker, the economically stronger party is bound 
at least to share the responsibility with the weaker for the essential 
fairness of the terms of the agreement before it is finally completed. 
Nay, I would go a step farther, and say that despite the indis- 
pensable condemnation of contract-breaking, provision should be 
made for possible revision in cases where it can be shown that 
exceptional hardships have appeared, unforeseen and unforeseeable 
at the time when the agreement was made. 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 217 

how deteriorating the effect of the insufficient wage may- 
prove to be on their standard of living. 

But it is a far cry from this empirical predisposition 
to the subhme ethical idea itself. The idea of "the just" 
as exemplified in any act performed by me includes the 
totality of all those conditions which make for the de- 
velopment of the ethical personality of others in so far 
as it can be affected by my action. To do a just act 
is to act with the totality of these conditions in view, in 
order to promote the end in view, which is the libera- 
tion of personality or at least the idea of personality in 
others and in myself. 

It is thus evident that a just act — an ideally, per- 
fectly just act, — can be performed by no man. First 
because the right conditions of human development are 
but very imperfectly known, and are only brought to 
light by slow degrees. Secondly because even as to the 
known conditions of justice, for instance the abolition 
of the evils of the present industrial wage system, a 
single employer, or even a group of well-intentioned 
employers can bring about the desired changes only to 
a very limited extent. 

Raising the finite quality underlying justice to the 
Nth degree therefore means opening an illimitable pros- 
pect. The ethical effort in this, as in all other in- 
stances, is destined to be thwarted. It is an effort in 
the direction of the finitely unattainable; the effort it- 
self, with the conviction it fosters as to the reality of 
that which is fibiitely unattainable, being the ethically 
valuable outcome. The just man, therefore, in any 
proper sense of the word, is one who is convinced of 



218 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the fact that he is essentially not a just man, and a deep 
humility as to both his actual and possible achievements 
will distinguish him from the "just man" so-called, who 
arrogates to himself that sublime attribute on the 
ground of the scrupulous payment of debts, or the ful- 
filment of contracts. Humility in fact will be found to 
be the characteristic mark of those who have attained 
ethical enlightenment in any direction. It is the out- 
ward sign from which we may infer that the finite qual- 
ity in them is in process of being raised to the Nth de- 
gree. 

I have given these few specific illustrations of my 
meaning, but what has been said applies equally to 
any of the plus qualities. The plus qualities are 
the ones which are favorable for transformation 
into the infinitized ethical quality. The ethical 
principle itself is one and indivisible. Any one of the 
plus qualities, when ethicized, will conduce to the same 
result. From whatever point of the periphery of the 
ethical sphere we advance toward the center we shall 
meet with the same experience. Thus self-afiirmation 
or egoism when in idea raised to the Nth degree will 
reveal tiiat the highest selfhood can be achieved only 
when the unique power of a spiritual being is deployed 
in such a way as to challenge the unique, distinctive 
power that is lodged in each of the infinite multitude of 
spiritual beings that are partners with us in the eternal 
life. 

And altruism, or care for others, at its spiritual 
climax, will conversely involve the recognition that true 
service to others can only be perfectly performed when 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 219 

the power that is resident in ourselves is exercised in 
its most vigorous, most spontaneous, and most self- 
aflSrming mode. And as the diverse empirical qualities 
which we observe in one another all appear to be modes 
of or cognate with these two principal tendencies — the 
self -affirming and the altruistic — ^the method of trans- 
figuring empirical qualities which has been set forth may 
be found to apply in every instance. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE (Continued) 

Whatever the steps that have thus far been taken, 
they are preliminary to the final step. And the method 
of "salvation," the distinctive feature wherein this eth- 
ical system differs from others, may now be briefly 
stated. So act as to elicit the unique personality in 
others, and thereby in thyself. Salvation is found in 
the effort to save others! The difference in method 
consists in the joint pursuit of the two ends, that of the 
other and that of the self. The controlling idea is that 
the numen in the self is raised out of potentiality into 
actuality by the energy put forth to raise the numen in 
the other, — the two divinities greeting each other as si- 
multaneously they rise into the light. 

It is thus that both egoism and altruism are tran- 
scended. To be egoistic is to assert one's empirical self 
at the expense of other empirical selves. To be altru- 
istic is to prefer the empirical selves of others to one's 
own. It is not true that self-realization, keeping to the 
empirical signification of self, leads insensibly to altru- 
istic conduct. The life of the great "self-realizer," 
Goethe, may be cited in evidence of this. Nor is it true 
that preference for the empirical self of another neces- 
sarily involves maintaining the integrity of one's own 
empirical self. In the empirical field egoism and altru- 

220 



THE SUPREME ETHICAL RULE 221 

ism are conflicting and mutually contradictory. It 
is in the spiritual field that they cease to be 
so, because both disappear in an object of the will 
which includes them both and transcends them both. If 
this be so, it may be asked why does the formula we 
have adopted read; So act as to elicit the unique per- 
sonality in others, and thereby in thyself? Why not 
conversely: — So act as to realize the unique per- 
sonality in thyself, and thereby in others ? — since in any 
case the ends in view are to be achieved conjointly. 
The answer is that in the pure spiritual field, in the 
world of ideal ethical units, it would make no difference 
from which point of view the relation were regarded. 
But when the spiritual formula is applied as a regula- 
tive rule to the mutual relations of empirical beings 
there is a difference. Thus applied, it must necessarily 
be couched in such terms as will make the spiritual birth 
of the other the prime object, and the spiritual birth of 
the self its incidental though inseparable concomitant. 
This is so because ethics is a science of energetics, which 
has to do with the potencies of our nature in their most 
affirmative efferent expression. All our higher facul- 
ties are active, and touch for good or ill the lives of those 
who surround us. Even the secret thoughts which 
seem only to affect our own individuality, inevitably 
project their influence upon our associates. 

Now ethics is a science of right energizing. And since 
as a matter of fact we do inevitably energize in such a 
manner as to affect others, the fundamental question in 
ethics is: how are we to regulate the incidences of our 
natures that fall upon other lives so that they shall be 



222 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

right? Since we cannot help acting upon them and in- 
fluencing them, how can we act rightly toward them and 
rightly influence them? And the rule supplied by the 
ethical principle is: Act upon their empirical selves in 
such a manner as to draw from their empu^ical natures 
the hidden personality, or at least the consciousness of it. 
And the repercussion of the rule is ; in the attempt to do 
so you will convert your own empirical self into a spir- 
itual personality, or at least evoke in yourself the idea 
of yourself as a spiritual personality. 

Incontestably, in the attempt to change others we are 
compelled to try to change ourselves. The transforma- 
tion undergone by a parent in the attempt to educate 
his child is an obvious instance. No parent is a true 
parent at the outset. As his perception deepens of the 
real needs of the child, which is so entirely dependent on 
his self-control, on his wisdom as well as his love, he 
will realize more and more his own deficiencies, and seek 
to remedy them. The same is true of the professor in 
relation to his students, of a leader and his followers, of 
a religious teacher and those who look to him for advice 
and help. In all such relations when rightly under- 
stood there is simultaneous growth on both sides. In 
the ethical sphere there is a law of levitation, the con- 
trary of the law of gravitation that obtains in the realm 
of matter. We actually tend to rise from a lower to a 
higher level in proportion as we bend downward to lift 
those still lower than ourselves. 



CHAPTER IX 

HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN 

OTHERS 

We now have to consider how to acquire the faculty 
of seeing the light that in our fellowmen is often so 
deeply hidden. We can love only that which is lovable. 
If we could see holiness, beauty concealed within our 
fellow-beings, we should be drawn towards them by the 
most powerful attraction, willingly living in their life, 
and permitting them to live in ours. We should then 
love all men, for we should see in all what is unspeakably 
lovable. But the empirical man stands between us and 
the spiritual man, and the empirical woman between us 
and the spiritual woman ; and very often the former are 
most repulsive, even when their ugly traits do not affect 
us personally, even when as spectators merely we observe 
how they behave. 

Much more is it well-nigh insuperably difficult to 
worship, in the sense of holding worthy, those whose 
characteristic traits directly offend us, or are perpetual 
thorns in our side. We must somehow learn to regard 
the empirical traits, odious, harmful or merely common- 
place and vulgar as they may be, as the mask, the screen 
interposed between our eyes and the real self of others. 
We must acquire the faculty of second sight, of seeing 
the lovable self as the true self. And how without self- 

223 



224 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

deception we can possibly succeed in doing so is the 
question. 

In the first place, it is my own craving for resurrection 
out of that death in life to which I seem doomed that 
must impel me to penetrate to the essential life in others. 
My own spiritual nature is in fetters, and to burst the 
fetters, to escape from the prison, there is but one way. 
The unique personality, which is the real life in me, I 
cannot gain, nor even approximate to, unless I search 
and go on searching for the spiritual numen in others.^ 
The force which incites me to penetrate beyond the em- 

^ In a previous chapter I remarked that the cheap estimate of 
others and of oneself is due to the habit of regarding human beings 
from the point of view of the use they can be put to, ignoring the 
wonderful and mysterious energies and potencies which are exhib- 
ited day by day in every human being. If the force stored in an 
infinitesimal particle of radium is calculated to excite admiration, 
how much more the forces exhibited in man, looking at him merely 
as the stage on which the spectacle of these forces is displayed. 
Consider the occurrence of such a thing as thought, the sheer miracle 
of mentality, the working of the constructive imagination in the 
artist, etc. If we sufficiently dwell on these inward facts about 
men, instead of merely emphasizing their external utility to one 
another, we shall thereby be put in tune, as it were, for the higher 
spiritual view of man. The difference I have said is like that be- 
tween understanding the theory of electricity and merely turning 
on electric power in the workshop or the home. And yet the scien- 
tific contemplation of the miracles of human nature as seen from 
within, while it serves as a propaedeutic, cannot actually bring us up 
to the ethical point of view. For this sort of contemplation reveals 
only the working of impersonal forces or powers, thought, feeling. 
Impulse in their endless actions and reactions, similar, in so far as 
they are impersonal, to the forces observed in nature. The ethical 
point of view alone discloses a centrality, an underivative, irreduc- 
ible core, a substantive being, personality. 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 225 

pirical traits of others, to surmount the walls which sur- 
round the shrine in them, is the consciousness that unless 
I do so I am myself spiritually lost, I remain my- 
self spiritually dead. For it is only face to face with the 
god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other that 
the god hidden in me will consent to appear. 

The expression ''death in life" means living, even liv- 
ing passionately and in a way efficiently, with a sense, 
nevertheless, underneath of the hollowness, the futility 
of the objects of pursuit. The death in life is the state 
of discontent that slowly gathers and augments in a 
man's mind as he pursues his customary ends, as he re- 
views his intellectual achievement, the books he has writ- 
ten, the pictures he has painted, the meager outcome of 
his schemes of social reform, the uncertain result of his 
efforts at moral self-development. It is the ensuing dis- 
taste for what he has actually accomplished, the disal- 
lowance of it as in any way ultimately satisfying. And 
yet this death in life is itself the well-spring of resurrec- 
tion, out of which is engendered an irrepressible yearn- 
ing of the mind to attach itself to something greater 
than all ephemeral interests, to something that has eter- 
nal worth, and is of such a kind as to communicate of its 
eternal nature to him who touches it. The god in the 
other, the eternal personality in the inner sanctuary of 
the other, is that object which must be sought and 
touched. The cry of my own soul for salvation is the 
impulse that leads me on to search for that object. 
Without the previous discontent, I shall not seek ; with- 
out the appraisement of the temporal ends and interests 
of man as in the last analysis unsatisfying, I shall not 



226 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

set out on my quest. Enmeshed in the jungle of the 
empirical world, I shall find no exit. I shall remain the 
victim of the illusion that the peace I need can be found 
in the realm of temporal desire. I shall commit what the 
theologians called Original Sin, that is, the preferring of 
"the works of the Creator to the Creator himself." 

But there is a second force that must act in conjunc- 
tion with this keen desire for personal liberation or high- 
est personal self-affirmation. It is the sense of the de- 
pendence of others upon what I can do for them. No- 
toriously it is the dependence of the child that evokes 
in the parent the noblest qualities of which he is cap- 
able, the self-denial, the incessant willingness to labor 
for the good of the offspring. It is the dependence of 
the student on the teacher, of the disciple on the master 
that elicits the latter's best thought. It is the depend- 
ence of the multitude on the religious teacher that puts 
him on his mettle. But if the dependence of others upon 
oneself is to produce its appropriate results, that depend- 
ence will have to be interpreted in a spiritual sense. We 
shall have to think of others as dependent on us not 
only for the necessary empirical services we are bound 
to render them, but those empirical services themselves 
will have to be regarded as instruments by means of 
which we may render them the highest spiritual service. 

This leads to a more rigorous scrutiny of the notion of 
service than has hitherto been customary. 

The question we must answer, and it is one that has 
never been adequately met, is : What is it in the other 
that we are to serve, what is the true object of our serv- 
ice? Man is worth while on his own account. 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 227 

Now no one can pretend that the welfare of the animal 
part of man is an object worth while on its own account. 
To satisfy the hunger or the thirst of another, or to pro- 
mote his health is to serve his body. But the body is the 
servant of a master. And I am not bound to serve a 
servant. If I am to serve the servant at all it must be 
for the sake of the master. Who then is the master ? 

The same argument applies also to the intellect. Hu- 
man science is after all but a narrow littoral along the 
illimitable continent of nescience. No one who com- 
pares the intellectual achievements of mankind with 
the problems that remain unsolved will pretend that the 
accomplishments of the intellect are worth while on their 
own account. The mental no less than the physical part 
of us has a master. There is an object higher than the 
acquisition of knowledge to be attained in the course of 
the mind's endeavors to acquire knowledge, namely the 
growth of the scientist towards unique personality, as 
will be shown in the chapter on the Vocations in the last 
Book. Analogous considerations apply to art and its 
achievements. 

And if someone should say that neither the satisfaction 
of the body alone, nor of the intellect, nor of the sesthetic 
sense, nor of the affections, but of all of them taken to- 
gether, is to be the object of our service, the answer is 
that this would be merely serving a whole household of 
servants, and still not serving the master. This quite 
aside from the fact that the ideal of happiness as con- 
sisting in the harmonious gratification of the various ele- 
ments enumerated is chimerical. Since some of the most 
indispensable elements of happiness, such as freedom 



228 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

from disease and from bereavement, are beyond our 
control. While even the higher faculties are far from 
harmoniously cooperating, the one-sidedness of human 
nature being such that a marked development in one 
direction is actually incompatible with complete develop- 
ment in other directions. 

Unless, then, there be some master end in everyone's 
life, one paramount to all others, to which all others 
are subordinate (the subordination and the renunciation 
involved being themselves means of spiritualizing one's 
nature) there is no point to the notion of service. That 
master end I have defined as the attainment of the con- 
viction of one's infinite interrelatedness, the conscious- 
ness of oneself as a member of the spiritual universe, a 
aTa^ \eyofxevop ^ in the eternal life, a source of energy 
induplicable in its kind, which radiates out and touches 
at the center each one of the infinite multitude of spirit- 
ual associates, and receives from them the effect of 
their aboriginally diverse modes of energizing in return. 

I have mentioned two motives that impel me to search 
for the numen in others. The one, the craving for my 
own liberation from the death in life, my own desperate 
outreaching toward salvation ; the other, the sense of the 
dependence of others upon me. Yes, but this depend- 
ence of theirs I must now interpret as spiritual depend- 
ence. I must look for them also beyond the death in 
life to life itself. I must have the courage and the truth- 
fulness to look upon neighbor, friend, wife, husband, 
son, daughter sub specie ceternitatiSj that is, as primarily 
spiritual beings, and estimate any physical, intellectual 

^ An expression occurring once only. 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 229 

or emotional help I can give them by the consideration 
whether it does or does not advance them toward the 
master end of their being. 

Courage of this sort is rare, because precisely the 
physical, mental and emotional wants of those who de- 
pend on us are the most obvious and clamorous. I do 
not of course mean that we should not attend effectually 
to their immediate wants. How could we avoid 
doing so? How could we neglect the health, 
the education, etc., of our children? What I say is 
that we should acquire the habit of looking upon the 
immediate ends as instrumental, and keep in view the 
supreme end which they in turn are to serve, and that 
we should beware of what I have called the fallacy of 
provisionalism — that of supposing that we are at liberty 
to provide for the lower immediate necessities first, leav- 
ing the higher and the highest needs to be attended to 
later on. 

The manner in which parents commonly plan for the 
future of their sons and daughters is perhaps the fittest 
illustration of the idea I am here seeking to exclude. 
During the period of infancy they pilot the child through 
the dangers that beset its physical existence. Later on, 
what is called education, the preliminary mental train- 
ing required to fit the young for the business of life, 
is felt to be imperative. Then comes the selection of 
a vocation with a view of assuring the material basis 
of subsistence. Still later, the advancement of the 
sons or daughters in their chosen vocations, or their 
social success occupies perhaps the parent's mind. 
Thoughts of a happy marriage flatter the parent's im- 



230 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

agination. If the moral side receives attention, the ut- 
most that as a rule is demanded is that the young person 
shall not fall below the average moral standard that 
happens to prevail in the community. And it is in 
such ways as these that we are apt to respond to 
the claims of those spiritual beings for whose essential 
future welfare we are to so large an extent responsible. 
To widen this all too narrow conception of our respon- 
sibilities, the following reflections may be found useful. 
A father in the last decade of his life realizes acutely the 
brevity of his own past existence. The curve of his life 
is now rapidly descending. Supposing him to be nearing 
seventy, his adult sons and daughters may by this time 
have reached the age of thirty or forty. Looking back 
on the thirty or more years that separate him from them, 
and remembering how like a dream the intervening 
years have glided by, it may come home to him with sud- 
den force how soon these, his sons and daughters too, 
though now in their prime, will reach the point at which 
he has arrived. The error of parents is to think of their 
grown sons and daughters only as moving on the up- 
ward curve of life. They stop short in imag- 
ination there. They look forward to marriage, voca- 
tional success and the like, as finalities for those who are 
still young. We ought to remember that the upward 
curve in the lives of our children will presently descend 
just as ours has descended, that the few decades which 
separate them from old age will pass as quickly for them 
as they have passed for us, — almost in the twinkling of 
an eye, — and we ought to ask on their behalf as we must 
on ours, — What is to be the result of it all? What does 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 231 

it all profit? And it is this thought that will turn our 
attention for them as for ourselves to the spiritual end 
which should be dominant at all times, — in the morning, 
at noon, and in the evening twilight of a human exist- 
ence. 

All that has been said has to do with the arousing in 
us of the desire to see in others the god, the numeric the 
master end. The wish to escape from our own death in 
life, the sense of the dependence of others on us as in- 
terpreted, — these two are the means of stirring us up to 
go forth upon the quest, and the seeking is already more 
than half the journey. Seek, and ye shall find. But 
what exactly is it that we are to seek? What are we to 
see in the other? — The spiritual nature. But what is the 
spiritual nature? I have frequently urged that the lack 
of a definite description of the spiritual nature is the 
chief defect in ethics up to the present time. This de- 
fect I endeavor to supply. The spiritual nature is the 
unique nature conceived as interrelated with an infinity 
of natures unique like itself. The spiritual nature in 
another is the fair quality distinctive of the other 
raised toward the Nth degree. We are to paint ideal 
portraits of our spiritual associates. We are to see them 
in the light of what is better in them as it would be if it 
were transfigiu-ed into the best. We are to go on as 
long as we live painting these ideal portraits of them. 
We are to retouch their portraits constantly. We are 
not indeed to obtrude or impose upon others these 
sketches, these mental creations of ours, but to propose 
them diffidently, reverently, to hold them up as glasses 
in which our associates may possibly see themselves mir- 



232 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

rored. It is for them to accept in whole or in part our 
rendering of their inner selves or to reject it. But we 
are not to desist from our labor in creating the ideal 
portraits, for in this consists the spiritual artistry of 
human intercourse. 

Our friends we are to see in the light of these glorified 
sketches, — our friends and our enemies too. For only 
thus can we win them, and be essentially their benefac- 
tors. There is no power so irresistible, it has been said, as 
love. I do not quite accept the word Love, It signifies 
the feeling that goes with the ideal appreciation of 
others ; and mere feeling supplies no directive rule of con- 
duct. But it is true that the power of ideally appreciat- 
ing others, of seeing them in the light of their possible 
best, and the feeling of love consequent on this vision, is 
the mightiest lever for transforming evil into good, and 
for sweetening the embittered lives of men. No greater 
boon can anyone receive from another than to be helped 
to think well of himself. Flattery is the base counter- 
feit of appreciation. Spiritual appreciation, apprecia- 
tion of the inner self despite the mask, is the greatest of 
gifts, to manifest it is the greatest of arts. In its su- 
preme form it is the art of going down to the lowest of 
human beings — the man in the ditch, the woman on the 
street — and making them think well of themselves be- 
cause of possibilities in their nature they themselves 
hardly surmise. It is also the art of making the most 
developed and advanced human beings realize in them- 
selves something still higher and better than they have 
ever reached. It is this art by which the supreme human 
benefactors have worked their spiritual miracles, and it is 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 233 

an art which to the extent of our ability we must each 
acquire and practice, if human society is to be redeemed. 

There are specially two points to be remembered : the 
one, that of seeing the unattained excellence in those who 
are already in the way of excellence; the other, where 
there is or seems to be a complete absence of fine quali- 
ties or of the promise of development, as in the case of 
backward children, that we should still not abate one 
jot of hope or effort, seeking to win even the smallest 
improvement, in the conviction that the best possible un- 
der the circumstances is incalculably worth while. For, 
compared with the infinite ideal even the achievements 
of the most advanced and most developed fall infinitely 
short, and what are they more than the best possible 
under the circumstances. The best possible under the 
circumstances represents for us the absolute best. 

Now a word in regard to those who resist the better in- 
fluence which we may seek to exercise over them, for 
instance, the so-called black sheep in families. Our 
chief concern should here be to prevent the resistance 
from infecting ourselves and provoking unethical re- 
actions. Ethics is a system of relations. The ethical 
point of view consists in seeing the relation between the 
offending person and ourselves as it ought to be, in see- 
ing with perfect objectivity the kind of conduct ideally 
required by the relation on both sides, seeing it and 
thereby assisting the other to see it. But we shall never 
succeed in doing this until we purge from our thoughts 
and speech every trace of private irritation. If we can 
point out to the one who has gone wrong how he has hurt 
another, and has spiritually hurt himself; if while we do 



234 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

this we see the fineness that is possible to him and make 
him realize that we see it, we shall not utterly fail. I 
am aware that other methods should accompany the 
spiritual appeal. In some cases, a temporary separation 
is indicated, in other cases, a prolonged change of en- 
vironment, or the gradual formation of new habits of in- 
dustry and application, the awakening of interest in 
some pursuit that leads the mind away from egocentric 
preoccupation. Psychology and experience crystallized, 
into commonsense have valuable counsels to give. But, 
along with the technical aids, the spiritual influence 
should never be lost sight of or relegated to the second 
place. 

And finally two ideas should be mentioned which are 
pertinent to broken relations, as for instance to the un- 
happy marriage relation and to interrupted friendships: 
One that the break is never complete. There remain cer- 
tain threads unsundered, which should be most sedu- 
lously preserved intact. They may serve as points of 
attachment to weave the tie anew. Again, and 
this is still more important, thought that the break 
would never have occurred if the relation had been as 
finely conceived as it ought to have been on my side as 
well as on the others. Take friendship as an example. 
A friendship of many years' standing is suddenly 
wrecked. Why? What were the terms on which the 
friendship had been based? What had friendship meant 
to me? — A certain personal attraction, mutual aid and 
comfort, taking counsel together, sympathy in joy and 
sorrow. These are valuable elements of friendship, 
but they do not even touch the essential point. They 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 235 

do not describe the principal function which a friend 
has to fulfil. The friend ideally is one who stands along- 
side another as the spectator of his spiritual develop- 
ment, as one who appraises his friend's advance toward 
the master end of life disinterestedly, and yet with deep- 
est personal concern. He is the mirror in which his 
friend may see the stages of his spiritual progress re- 
flected. Now I have lost my friend. Why have I lost 
him? Because he was never a true friend to me, and, I 
must add, because I was never a real friend to him. I 
have not really lost him, because I never really possessed 
him. And on making this discovery I shall have a new 
light shed on what friendship might mean. I may never 
be so fortunate as to find the actual friend, but I shall 
know what he ought to be, and what it is in me to be to 
him. And when I say, *'what it is in me to be to him," I 
think of resources of my inner being which have never 
been called out ; I think of the worth that belongs to me 
as a spiritual being capable of giving forth and receiving 
highest spiritual influence, and I am thereby immeasur- 
ably aggrandized in my own esteem, the self in me is 
lifted nearer as it were to its infinite counterpart in the 
eternal life. I walk henceforth on a higher level, I dwell 
amid serener presences. And this aggrandizement of 
the self, not on the ground of what I am but what I may 
be, and of others too, not on the ground of what they are, 
but what they may be, is the compensation derived from 
the bitter experience of broken relations. And what has 
been said of friendship by way of example is true of 
frustration in marriage as well, and of frustrations of 
every kind. 



236 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 



NOTE TO BOOK in 

I may mention a certain test case for trying out the pro- 
posed rule, namely, to idealize the fair quality in others, and 
thereby achieve the concomitant transformation of the self. I 
mean the case of the victims of a cruel race prejudice, such as 
is entertained against the colored people of the South by the 
more brutal whites. I remember a long evening which I once 
spent in the company of a leader among the colored people, and 
one of the best men I have ever known. I looked that night 
deep into a suffering, sensitive human soul, and I tried to put 
myself in his place. I realized the hardships of his lot, the 
anguish that I myself should suffer if I were in his position. But 
would there be the spiritual equivalent.? Would the way I had 
found in trials less poignant be the way of release? To make 
the situation clear, I selected two points in which the white 
man, my supposed oppressor, has the advantage, two fair 
qualities of which he can boast. His family life is purer on the 
average than that of a large number of the colored people. 
And he has also learned in the case of white men to distinguish 
between the criminal and the innocent. He will protect the 
latter, and give up the former to justice. Now my own people, 
putting myself in the place of the colored man, are backward 
in both these respects. In consequence of the long centuries 
of slavery their family relations are often unstable, while they 
are apt to shield the colored criminal from the arm of the law. 
In both respects I want to represent to myself the white man 
as he ought to act. He ought to help me lift up my race, first, 
by making their family life purer and more stable. But in- 
stead, many of the whites debauch the women of my race, while 
perhaps respecting those of their own race ; moreover, by refus- 
ing decent accommodation on railroads they compel educated 
and refined colored women to travel in cars in which the coars- 
est men are herded together. 

Again, how can I, as a leader among my people, teach them 



THE SPIRITUAL NUMEN IN OTHERS 237 

to distinguish between the criminal and the innocent of their 
race so long as mobs of white men indiscriminately lynch the 
innocent and the criminal of my race alike on the barest sus- 
picion? Against their actual behavior I set up in my mind a 
picture of how the superior race, superior in point of civiliza- 
tion, but still morally backward, ought to act. I can but sug- 
gest this picture, keep it in view as a constant protest, or still 
better as an imperative model. 

But I can do more. I can turn upon myself, and upon 
others of my own people who are in advance of the majority of 
them, and presently I shall be compelled to admit that amongst 
ourselves something of the same pride of superiority exists, 
something of the same prejudice against those who are 
lower in the scale. For there is also a stratification and a hier- 
archy of higher and lower among the oppressed. And the 
relatively higher are apt to behave toward the lower in the 
same fashion as their common oppressors behave toward them 
all. We find the same tendency among other oppressed races, 
as for instance in the attitude of certain of the Spanish and the 
German Jews toward the Polish and the Russian. Purge thy- 
self, therefore, is the incisive monition ; purify thine own nature 
of that pride which hurts so cruelly when it is directed upon 
thee from without. Let the sin committed against thee be the 
means of purifying thee from the like sin. This is the spiritual 
compensation, this the thought that leads to inward peace ! 



BOOK IV 

APPLICATIONS: THE ETHICS OF THE 
FAMILY, THE STATE, THE INTERNA- 
TIONAL RELATIONS, ETC. 



CHAPTER I 

THE COLLECTIVE TASK OF MANKIND AND THE 
THREEFOLD REVERENCE 

The social institutions, the family, the organs of ed- 
ucation, the vocation, the political organization, the or- 
ganization of mankind, the ideal religious society are to 
be treated as a progressive series. The individual is to 
pass successively through them, advancing from station 
to station toward ethical personality. 

In designating the social institutions as an ethical 
series, care must be taken not to confound the terms of 
the series as now existent with the terms as they would 
be did they conform to their ethical functions. For in- 
stance, even the monogamic family is as yet only in part 
ethically organized. School and university are adrift as 
to their ethical purpose. The majority of mankind are 
engaged in occupations which it would be absurd 
to call vocations, and the international group exists 
as yet barely in embryo. Hence when we speak of 
the social institutions as a progressive series through 
which the individual is to advance towards personality, 
we are describing the aim of social reconstruction, not 
the present state of things. The spiritual nature of 
man must create for itself appropriate social organs. It 
has been painfully engaged in the attempt to do so since 
the existence of our race on earth. 

241 



242 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

In each of the social institutions we are to 
distinguish between the empirical substratum and the 
spiritual imprint which it is to receive. We find in each 
ready to hand some natural non-moral motive or set of 
motives of which we are to avail ourselves in the en- 
deavor to evoke the spiritual result. Thus in the family 
the non-moral motive is affection due to consanguinity ; 
in the school sociality, the school society being the first 
society into which the child enters ; in the vocation there 
is the craving for mental self-expression, in the state, 
patriotism, or the feeling we have for the larger whole 
in which we are included on the basis of similarity of 
language, historic tradition, etc. The natural basis of 
the international group of society is the empirical, and 
as yet in no way ethical, fact of the commercial and in- 
dustrial interdependence of the different countries, a 
fact used by M. Bloch and his more recent followers as 
an argument against war. 

In popular literature the empirical substratum and 
the spiritual relation to be produced by means of it are 
constantly confused. In any genuinely ethical system 
they must be carefully discriminated.^ 

In each of the social institutions, or, as we may now 
call them, the phases of life experience through which 
the individual must pass on the way toward personality, 
the winning of the ethical result depends on observance 
of the threefold reverence. What I mean by the three7 
fold reverence must be explained in some detail, es- 

^ Thus the interdependence of nations in respect to their material 
interests is often erroneously expatiated on as if it constituted an 
actually ethical bond between them. 



THE THREEFOLD REVERENCE 243 

pecially as the reader might otherwise be led into identi- 
fying my view with that expressed by Goethe in JVil- 
helm Meister, The three modes of reverence mentioned 
by Goethe in his sketch of the "pedagogical province" 
have for their background the poet's pantheism. The 
view here set forth is based on ethical idealism. 

In order to introduce my thought let me go back to 
the phrase repeatedly used in Book III — '*the task of 
humanity." Mankind as a whole, the generations past, 
present and to come, have a certain work to do, a task to 
accomplish. A collective obligation rests on our race, 
spanning the generations. 

The spiritual conception of the collective task is the 
basis of the threefold reverence. The spiritual result, as 
was said above, is in every instance to be superinduced 
upon an empirical substratum. The empirical sub- 
stratum in this case is mankind considered as a develop- 
ing entity, which partially reproduces in the present the 
mental and moral acquisitions of ancestors, partially in- 
creases the heritage and passes it on to the newcomers. 
I, as an individual, am also inextricably linked up back- 
ward and forward with those who come before and those 
who are to come after. I cannot take myself out of this 
web. The task laid upon human society as a whole is also 
laid upon me. I am a conscious thread in the fabric that 
is weaving, conscious in a general way of the pattern to 
be woven. 

But viewed empirically the development of humanity 
is haphazard. Much is preserved from the past that 
ought to be cast aside. Many traces of past error remain 
unexpunged in the life of the present. A mixed stream, 



244 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

compounded of good and evil, passes through our veins 
into our successors'. The empirical fact is simply the 
fact of partial reproduction, partial augmentation and 
partial transmission. The ethical conception of progress 
depends on the view that there is an ideal pattern of the 
spiritual relation in the mind of man, destined to become 
more explicit as it is tested out and that the 
present generation ought to appraise the heritage of 
the past according to this pattern, preserving and re- 
jecting and adding its own quota in such a way as to 
enable the succeeding generations to sift the worthful 
from the worthless more successfully, and to see the 
ideal pattern more explicitly. 

The threefold reverence has been described as rever- 
ence towards superiors, equals and inferiors. For this 
inadequate description I would substitute the following: 
In place of reverence towards superiors, reverence for 
the valid work of ethicizing human relations already ac- 
complished in the past, reverence for the precious perma- 
nent achievements and for those who achieved them, — 
the "Old Masters." The human race has gained 
a certain ethical footing in the empirical sphere. The 
general task has not to be begun ab initio. In the act 
of separating what is worth while from what is worth- 
less, in the very process of revision and reinterpretation, 
we manifest our reverence for the past. It is thus 
that true historicity is distinguished from blind conser- 
vatism. And besides, by studying the old masters, 
we acquire a certain standard of excellence. Since those 
who have contributed epoch-making advances in philos- 
ophy, in religion, in science, inspire us by the grandeur 



THE THREEFOLD REVERENCE 245 

of their attack on the great problems ; and the spirit of 
their attack, is unspeakably stimulating to us, even when 
we reject their solutions. We cannot too humbly sit 
as disciples at the feet of the great masters if discipleship 
has this meaning. 

Reverence of the first type prescribes the same atti- 
tude towards preeminent personalities among our con- 
temporaries. They rank with the great predecessors in- 
asmuch as they are in a way for us predecessors. They 
are in advance of us. To revere them is to endeavor to 
come abreast of them, to obtain the advantage of the 
forward movement which their superior capacity en- 
abled them to initiate, and to start where they leave off, 
adding our small quota. 

The second kind of reverence is directed toward those 
who are, in respect to their gifts and opportunities, 
approximately on the same level with us, but whose gifts 
differ from and are supplementary to ours. In our 
relation to them we may learn the great lesson of ap- 
preciating unlikeness, and working out our own correl- 
ative unlikeness by way of reaction. 

The third kind of reverence is directed toward the un- 
developed, among whom I include the young, the back- 
ward groups among civilized peoples, and the uncivilized 
peoples. We are to reverence that which is potential in 
all of these individuals and groups, and we do so by fit- 
ting ourselves to help them actualize their spiritual pos- 
sibilities. Reverence of the third kind takes the highest 
rank among the three. The spiritual life of the world is 
a deep mine as yet explored only near the surface. The 
unrealized possibilities of mankind are the chief asset. 



246 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

But in order to effectuate our purpose with respect to 
the undeveloped, we must have reverence toward the 
great Old Masters, to gain a certain standard of excel- 
lence ; and reverence towards unlikeness in others to be- 
come ourselves differentiated individualities, and in or- 
der to respect the unlikeness which we shall presently 
likewise find in the backward and the young. So that the 
three reverences play into one another and are insepa- 
rable from one another, the first two being indispensable 
to the third. They are in truth a "trinity in unity." But 
the third reverence is the supreme one. The chief objec- 
tive must be the undeveloped, because our face must be 
turned toward the future, because the task of mankind 
is as yet in its early stages. The third reverence is 
supreme. Now it is only when we have grasped the 
meaning of the triple reverence that we can fully ap- 
preciate the significance of the family as the first matrix 
in which the reverential attitudes are to be acquired. It 
is only then that we can rightly conceive of the organs of 
education, and of the end upon which the activities of 
school and university should converge. And similarly 
we shall find our interpretation of the vocation, the state, 
and the international society illuminated by this concep- 
tion of the three-fold reverence. 

In popular religious teaching the individual is thrust 
into the foreground. His salvation as a detached entity 
is the principal object. In positivism and evolutionalism 
society in its empirical aspect is exalted, and the individ- 
ual tends to be regarded as a stepping-stone. In the 
spiritual interpretation of the collective task as outlined, 
the individual remains integral and sacrosanct. The 



THE THREEFOLD REVERENCE 247 

spiritual society of which the image is to be imprinted on 
himaan society is a society of indefeasible ethical person- 
alities. ^ The individual even now at his station in the 
present attributes to himself this lofty character and the 
various obligations which he already recognizes, and 
which he endeavors to fulfil, afford him ample oppor- 
tunity to vindicate his spiritual selfhood. If in addition 
he looks forward longingly to the future, and to the 
greater spiritual fulfilment that may be expected among 
posterity, this expectation is founded on the belief that 
what he already possesses in germ will then be more un- 
folded, that the ideal of the indefeasible worth of man 
of which he is already conscious in himself will then be 
more completely recognized and its infinite implications 
be more fully understood. ^ 

^ While at the same time the ethical personality, unlike the "win- 
dowless monads" of Leibnitz is effectuated only in the cross-rela- 
tions which subsist between each one and his spiritual associates. 

^ I may here point out the bearings of this general point of view 
on the much-mooted and confused question of the value of the study 
of history. Ranke holds that the aim of the historian should be to 
reproduce factually the occurrences of the past. Robinson insists 
on the uses of history. But uses to what end.^ The history of the 
past is fragmentary and full of gaps. The data with respect to 
some of the most important periods are irrecoverable. ' The attitude 
of the human race towards its own history, I take it, should be like 
that of an individual towards his past. I cannot really resuscitate 
my past. Memory is treacherous. Much has been forgotten. The 
events of my youth are discolored when seen in the perspective of 
later years. I should try to know myself as far as I can, but with a 
view of pressing on and realizing with such light upon myself as I 
have, the ethical aim. The same applies to mankind. And the im- 
portant point is in the review to disengage the ideas that controlled 
the principal social institutions in the past, and to appraise these 



248 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ideas from the standpoint of our present ethical insight. Thus, in 
treating the history of the family, we should single out the ideas that 
controlled the family relation, the idea of the patria potestas, the 
feudal idea, or the connection of the family with landed property. 
In writing the history of the organs of education, we should bring 
into view priestly education as among the Brahmins, musical or 
aesthetic education as among the Greeks, the idea of princely edu- 
cation, the idea of preparation for the government of an empire, 
which accounts for the system of the English universities, the con- 
trolling idea of the German universities. And then at the end of our 
survey we shall be in a better position to discern what is to be the 
ideal of school and university education in an ethical democracy. 
The same applies to the controlling ideas of the state, and of the 
remaining social institutions. 



CHAPTER II 

THE FAMILY 

The family is in process of change. We should fix 
attention on the kind of change that is desirable. The 
change desirable is the more perfect expression of the 
ethical ideal in the life of the family. One striking fact 
is that in the past the family was never supposed to exist 
merely for the "benefit" of its individual members. The 
latter view is an individualistic novelty of our age, and, 
as commonly imderstood, it is radically false. 

Under the caste system the family subordinates the 
welfare of its members to the function of the caste. Soci- 
iety being stationary and stratified, the family is the 
organ for the reproduction of a stratified social system. 

A similar view prevails under feudalism. We of to- 
day resent the idea underlying primogeniture. From 
the modern point of view we ask why the eldest born 
should be preferred to his brothers. Primogeniture ap- 
pears to us to assert the inequality of individual men ; but 
from the feudal point of view the eldest born was pre- 
ferred, not as an individual, but as the steward of the 
family property. The family had a fixed place in the 
social hierarchy, and to maintain this place the estate 
was to remain undivided in the hands of one person. 

Now what is amiss with the modern family? This is 
profoundly amiss — that the idea of the family as serv- 

249 



250 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ing a larger purpose is disappearing, and that the family- 
is supposed to exist for the benefit of its individual 
members, benefit meaning happiness. Frequent di- 
vorce and disintegration are the natural consequences 
of this view, for if the tie exists solely for the happiness 
of those bound by it, then it ought indeed to be dissolved 
when the relation entails suffering. 

Society has passed from status to contract, and many 
seem to hold that contract is the last word, the true ex- 
pression of freedom. We have passed from status to 
contract, we must pass on from contract to organ- 
ization, and thus to true freedom. 

Status is based on the analogy of the animal organ- 
ism. The caste society and the feudal society, ethically 
regarded, are spurious organisms. This spurious type 
of organization is no longer viable, and now bald indi- 
vidualism is taking its place. The malady mth which 
the family is afilicted is individualism. The desirable 
change is genuine organization on the basis of the spir- 
itual equivalence of all functions.^ The relation of the 
family to the general social task of organization is two- 
fold. The family is the seminary in which shall be im- 
planted the germinal principle of organization, that prin- 
ciple which is destined to transform all the subsequent 
terms of the social series, the instrumentality to be em- 
ployed being the three- fold reverence. Again, the fam- 
ily will reach its more perfect form in proportion as the 
succeeding social institutions, the school, vocation, state, 

^ Spurious or bastard organization was based on the empirical 
preeminence of some function like that of the priest or the warrior. 



THE FAMILY 251 

shall themselves be essentially organized, the influence 
of the later terms retroacting on the first term. 

The family, in the spiritual view of it which I am 
sketching, differs from the family of other days, and 
also from the modern family, in two particulars. It 
does not recruit some one social class or stratimi. It 
does not direct the offspring into a single specific vo- 
cation. It is the vestibule that leads into all the differ- 
ent professions and vocations. And secondly, the 
family does not prepare the young to enter into a voca- 
tion for the purpose of securing happiness. It does not 
regard the vocation as servile to the empirical ends of 
the individual, but as a phase through which he is to 
pass on the road toward ethical personality, the fulfil- 
ment of the objective aims of the vocation being the 
means of acquiring the ethical development which the 
vocation is competent to furnish. Thus we regain, but 
on a much higher plane, what the family possessed be- 
fore it began to break do\\Ti under the influence of mod- 
ern individualism, namely, an ulterior greater purpose 
imbedded within itself and yet extending beyond itself. 

When we have grasped this relation of the family 
to the subsequent terms of the social series, and bear 
constantly in mind as we should that the three-fold rev- 
erence is the instrument by which organization is to be 
effected, we shall then be able to give adequate reasons 
why the monogamic ideal alone is the true ethical ideal, 
why the marriage relation, if it is to be ethical, must be 
permanent between two and exclusive of all others. 

Let me briefly point out the relation of the mono- 
gamic family to the three types of reverence. The 



252 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

third type ranks highest. The tie of consanguinity be- 
tween parents and offspring supplies the empirical sub- 
stratum. To be interested in the undeveloped, to sur- 
mise possibilities as yet wholly unapparent, to go to in- 
finite pains to nurture and educate an immature being 
like a child, for all this natural affection is almost indis- 
pensable. As a rule no one can so love a child as its own 
parents do. The plan of state education for infants to 
replace home education is advocated by some on the 
ground that professional kindergartners and teachers 
are more competent to train the budding human mind 
than unpedagogical fathers and mothers. The func- 
tion to be performed by the scientific educator in co- 
operation with the home is doubtless not to be 
missed; but taking children away from under the care 
of their parents, assembling them in what would be 
equivalent to state orphan asylimis, is a procedure 
which precisely for pedagogical reasons would be pre- 
posterous. For the parent supplies that concentrated 
love for the individual child, that intimate cherishing 
which the most generous teacher, whose affections are 
necessarily distributed over many, can never give. And 
the child needs this selective affection. The love of the 
parent is the warm nest for the fledgling spirit of the 
child. To be at home in this strange world the young 
being with no claims as yet on the score of usefulness to 
society or of merit of any kind, must find somewhere a 
place where it is welcomed without regard to usefulness 
or merit. And it is the love of the parents that makes 
the home, and it is his own home that makes the child 
at home in the world. 



THE FAMILY 253 

It does not follow that parents in general do rever- 
ence the spiritual possibilities latent in their children. 
The natural affection is there, but the empirical sub- 
stratum and the spiritual relation are not to be 
confounded. The kind of reverence of which I 
speak is an ideal thing to be worked towards, 
not something that as yet actually exists, save in ex- 
ceptional cases. In the caste family and the feudal 
family the father incarnated, as it were, the social sys- 
tem so far as that stratum or class was concerned to 
which he belonged. He inspired awe. He demanded 
implicit obedience. It was the existing social system 
that spoke from his lips. But this system itself had 
an arbitrary character, and the worship of the father 
was hardly ethical. The modern family goes to the op- 
posite extreme. In it the relations between parents 
and children are loose, and tend to become more and 
more so. Reverence is scarcely looked for by the par- 
ent, and is not likely to be accorded. On the individu- 
alistic theory the child at a very early age is treated as 
an equal, and whether encouraged to do so or not is 
apt to assert its independence. The members of the 
family are not joined in an organic connection, but 
resemble a collection of atomic units that easily fall 
apart. The ethical relation, the real reverence must 
spring from the service the parent renders in bringing 
to light the specific individuality of the child with an 
eye to the transmutation which it is to receive in the 
later terms of the social series. Not only highest grat- 
itude but genuine reverence are due to the parent who 
performs this office. "You have given me physical 



254 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

birth, you are now giving me spiritual birth," will be 
the child's response to the parent's efforts. 

Thus much may be said as to the reason why the mar- 
riage relation should be exclusive. The principal rea- 
son why it should be life-long, is that the office of the 
parent in furthering the spiritual development of the 
children does not end when they reach the threshold of 
manhood or womanhood. On the contrary, the finest 
touches are often added to the work of education when 
the sons and daughters have become established in a 
business or profession, and have founded families of 
their own. The wisdom gathered from the experience 
of their elders, the disinterested counsel inspired by 
love, will then be of the greatest use to them. The 
young mother, especially, confronted with the prob- 
lems of child-rearing, will naturally turn to her own 
mother for advice. The son, who comes to close quar- 
ters with the difficulties of life, will find in the father, 
who is detached from life and has the tranquil vision 
of old age, his best friend. 

In speaking of the third type of reverence I have 
already included all that need here be said of the first 
type. The reverential relation is mutual. The child 
will truly reverence the parent who on his side rever- 
ences the child's spiritual possibilities. The child does 
not understand the word Spiritual, but is unconsciously 
affected by the thing itself which I am here describing. 
A person who has the vision, who has the gift of di- 
vining what is as yet unmanifested, will convey to oth- 
ers the illumination of his vision. The child will real- 
ize in his parent the presence of something higher, and 



THE FAMILY 255 

will revere it, worship it. Certain looks, certain ex- 
pressions of the countenance, certain gestures, though 
not understood in their meaning at the time, will be 
imprinted on memory to be recalled in later life and 
then understood. But it is essential, in order to evoke 
reverence in the young, to have it oneself. He who 
does not steadfastly revere something, yes, someone 
greater than himself, will never elicit reverence in others. 

The second type of reverence, towards those who are 
unlike ourselves but none the less our equals, can be 
inculcated in an elementary way in the family through 
the relations of brothers and sisters. Fraternal feeling is 
an empirical means whereby to produce or at least pre- 
pare the way for a very notable spiritual result — the 
willingness not only to respect difference in others, but 
to welcome it. In current teaching the emphasis in fra- 
ternity is placed on likeness. It should rather be 
placed on the unlikeness. These exist, and are 
sometimes very marked between brothers, and often 
cause discord and separation. The novices in life 
should therefore be taught betimes to overcome their 
repugnance to those who are unlike themselves, and 
the common relation of the brothers to their parents will 
be helpful to this end. Naturally we dislike the unlike. 
Alienness is ever productive of disharmony. The fact, 
however, that the unlike person in the case of a brother 
is the child of the same parents draws us powerfully 
toward him despite the tendency to recoil, 

I must not omit to mention that the triple reverence 
is most naturally and easily learned in the family, be- 



256 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

cause of the simplicity of the relations, and the limited 
number of persons involved. 

The question may be raised whether the single fam- 
ily should remain the primary social unit, or whether 
a group of families united in close cooperation would 
better fulfil the purposes for which the family exists. 
The privacy and separateness of each family would not 
need to be disturbed, cooperation might be limited to 
specific objects, such as simplifying the work of the 
household, providing kindergarten education for the 
young children, better play facilities, separate study 
rooms for adolescents, common entertainments for all, 
and a service of song at the beginning or close of the 
day. One obvious difiiculty in constituting such a 
group would be: the diversities of tastes and opinions, 
particularly such as are not perceived at the outset, but 
emerge on nearer acquaintance, and as the younger 
members grow up and develop their idiosyncrasies. 
One great advantage, however, would result if care were 
taken to include in the group persons belonging to dif- 
ferent vocations — scientist, scholar, architect, lawyer, 
artist. Young persons as they mature would then have 
the benefit of contact with those who are intimately 
familiar with different lines of vocational activity, 
and would be helped to know their own mind as to their 
future career better than they commonly do now. Per- 
sonal contact with one who is engaged in a certain line 
of work is a far better instruction as to the nature of the 
work than reading about it or observation from a dis- 
tance. 

The ethical theory of marriage has been developed in 



THE FAMILY 257 

my published addresses. ^ But certain topics not there 
treated I would at least allude to here in passing, and 
among them the need of a more careful study of the 
causes that lead to infelicity in marriage. Kant men- 
tions, as an instance of the discrepancy between the nat- 
ural and the moral order, the fact that the sex passion 
is often at its height before the period when marriage 
may be wisely entered into. There are other seemingly 
radical incongruities, for instance, that between the face, 
the features of a person and his real character. The one 
may be borrowed so to speak from some ancestor, while 
the real nature is quite at variance with the impression 
created by the face, so that one who thinks he marries 
A really marries B. There are diversities also between 
partners in marriage that only show themselves in the 
latter part of life, when the outlines of character are apt 
to stand forth bare. Besides, there is assumed to be, by 
some modern writers, a certain fundamental sex antag- 
onism. 

The whole question of the characteristics of sex re- 
quires to be far more carefully investigated than it has 
been. And here let me take the opportunity to express 
my positive appreciation of empirical science in con- 
nection with ethical theory. The chief object of this 
volume is to work out the general plan of the ethical 
relations, or the regulative principle in ethics, and this 
I am deeply convinced is supersensible and non-empiri- 
cal. Applied ethics, however, is dependent not only on 
the regulative principle but on empirical science, that 
is, on an extended and ever-increasing knowledge of 

^ See Marriage and Divorce, D. Appleton & Co. 



258 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

physiology, psychology, and of the environmental con- 
ditions that influence human beings, and I am keenly 
desirous to ward off the possible misunderstanding that 
the ethical theory here proposed is intended to replace 
the empirical science of man, individual or social. 

Without the way there is no going. ' 
•Without the truth there is no knowing; 

says Thomas a Kempis. The way is thel empirical 
knowledge, the truth is the regulative principle. The 
way itself, as we proceed along it, will shed additional 
light on the truth. Nevertheless, without the out- 
lines of the truth, without a goal in view, we should but 
be wandering blindly. 

It is likely that the relations between persons in mar- 
riage will in future become more complex, and the dif- 
ficulties of adjustment more serious, in proportion as 
under the influence of the new education the individu- 
alities of men and women become more developed. 
Problems hardly as yet envisaged will then become 
pressing. But whatever the difficulties, they can be 
overcome if the ideal purpose of marriage be kept in 
view, namely, that two beings of opposite sexes shall 
spend their lives in the spiritual reproduction of off^- 
spring. The relation is triangular. Husband and 
wife are each to elicit the distinctive best in 
the other, incited, impelled to do so in order jointly 
to evoke the distinctive best in the young. And the 
young represent posterity. What the parents do for 
their own children they do for posterity, since children 



THE FAMILY 259 

are that portion of posterity whicH comes under their im- 
mediate influence. And in this sense it may be said that 
marriage is an organ for the spiritual reproduction and 
advancement of the human race. 



CHAPTER III 

THE VOCATIONS 

The next term in the series of social institutions is 
the school, inclusive of its higher departments. But for 
reasons which will sufficiently appear to anyone who 
carefully reads this chapter, it is advisable to treat the 
vocations first. 

! A more ludicrous mistake cannot be conceived than 
that of taking the ideal for the fact, the wish for the 
deed, in matters touching the social institutions. Thus 
the term "vocational guidance" is often used, as if the 
occupations of the majority of men already answered 
to what is implied in the idea of a vocation as if, for in- 
stance, industrial labor in a factory were a "vocation" 
into which the young only needed to be guided, whereas 
guidance means, in this case, being directed into some 
mechanical occupation not already overcrowded, or 
turned into other unvocational occupations when they 
happen not to be over-filled. But what is true of 
monotonous, mechanical labor in factories is true in a 
greater or less degree of all human occupations. None 
of them at least are as yet vocations in the highest sense. 

I dwell on this because, in describing the vocation as 
the third term in the series, I would not have the reader 
imagine that this third term exists in any adequate man- 
ner. Rather is it to be the task of what is often loosely 

260 



THE VOCATIONS 261 

called "social reform" to create the ethical series, — ^not 
only the third term (the vocation), but the whole series 
from beginning to end, the family, the school, the state, 
the international society, the ideal religious society. 
The phrase "social reform" is strictly correct only when 
used comprehensively in this way. To confine its usage 
to the more equable repartition of wealth, or to changes 
in economic conditions is unwarrantably to narrow its 
signification. Social reform is the reformation of all 
the social institutions in such a way that they may be- 
come successive phases through which the individual 
shall advance towards the acquisition of an ethical per- 
sonality. 

In sketching the ideals of the different vocations, I 
have to consider in what way each contributes to the 
formation of an ethical personality. There is an em- 
pirical side to each vocation. Every vocation satisfies 
some one or more of the empirical human needs ; but in 
the very act or process of doing so, it ought, in order to 
deserve the name of a vocation, to satisfy also a spiritual 
need, to contribute in a specific way toward the forma- 
tion of a spiritual personality.^ Agriculture furnishes 
food. The different trades minister tc a great variety 
of wants. The scientist extends our knowledge of na- 
ture. With this empirical aspect of the vocations, how- 
ever, I am not here concerned. A scientific classification 
of the vocations is not a task to which I need address my- 
self. My task is an ethical classification of the voca- 

^ Just as the family is the organ of physical reproduction, but in 
that very capacity is ethically required to bring to birth the spiritual 
nature of its members. 



262 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tions. As this has never been undertaken, the first at- 
tempt is difficult and perforce provisional, 
I outline my topics as follows: 

1. The theoretical physical sciences (including math- 
ematics) considered from the point of view of the spe- 
cific way in which the ethical personality may be devel- 
oped by those who pursue them. 

2. The practical counterparts of the theoretical sci- 
ences, e. g,, engineering, and the industrial arts in so 
far as they depend on and illustrate and use principles 
and methods furnished by science. Work in factories, 
mines, and also in the fields, is to be regarded as the 
executive side of theoretical science. 

3. The historical sciences, those which have to do with 
mentally reproducing the life of the human race in the 
past, including history proper, philology, archaeology, 
etc. 

4. The vocation of the artist. 

5. The vocation of the lawyer and the judge. 
The vocation of the statesman. 

The vocation of the religious teacher. 

The three last mentioned are classed together as edu- 
cational vocations, that is, as vocations which, in respect 
to their highest significance, are branches of the peda- 
gogy of mankind, having for their object to educate the 
human race; the ethical object of the lawyer being to 
educate society in the idea of justice ; of the statesman 
to educate society in the idea of the state; of the re- 
ligious teacher to educate society in the idea of the spir- 
itual universe. 

This conception of the lawyer, the politician, etc., as 



THE VOCATIONS 263 

primarily educators, is a point to which particular at- 
tention is directed. The significance of it will appear 
further on. I shall now indicate in bare outline what 
I conceive to be the specific contribution of the voca- 
tions mentioned to the formation of a spiritual person- 
ality. 

Science 

Conspicuously important in this connection is the 
question whether and by what means the pursuit of the 
physical sciences can be linked up to the supreme spir- 
itual end of man. The scientist may develop into a 
great thinker in the course of comprehensive and intri- 
cate investigations, but he does not thereby necessarily 
develop into a personality. His mind will become in this 
way a mirror of the orderly procession of nature's phe- 
nomena. He will be the accurate recorder of what hap- 
pens, the knowing spectator of the play, whose eye rec- 
ognizes the actors, the forces, beneath their disguises. 
The pursuit of knowledge of this kind for the sake of 
knowledge, or it may be for the sake of exercising the 
faculty of cognition, represents the purely scientific con- 
ception of the aim of science. Whatever moral qualities 
are exacted of the scientist, such as accuracy or intellec- 
tual veracity, self-abnegation, scorn of mere vulgar 
pecuniary reward or celebrity, and at least a provisional 
disregard of the practical benefits to be derived by man- 
kind from scientific discovery — all these fine traits of 
character are prized as subordinate to the strictly scien- 
tific object. The ethical character of the man himself is 
not regarded as the supreme end to be fostered by his 



264 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

scientific occupation, but as instrumental to his occupa- 
tion the aims of which are said to be purely impersonal. 

There is thus a scientific conception of the aim of sci- 
ence; on the other hand, there is an ethical conception 
of it. The former points in the direction of the indefi- 
nite extension of knowledge which never embraces a to- 
tality of the knowable, never reaches a limit, even in 
idea. The latter points to the infinite, not to the indefi- 
nitej sets up an ideal of the infinite as the goal, takes the 
man out of the flux, centralizes his individuality into a 
personality by relating him to the infinite, not as the mere 
spectator and scribe of nature, but through his action or 
other potential spiritual beings like himself. 

The scientist, in brief, like every one else, becomes a 
personality by eliciting the potential spiritual nature in 
other human beings. But be it noted that he is to per- 
form this task as a scientist. His particular occupa- 
tion is to be the means of producing a particular spir- 
itual result in others as well as in himself, and by this 
means his occupation is to be converted into a vocation. 

How? Through partial success and frustration. 
Partial success in the case of a scientist means for one 
thing, increased mental grasp, the power to hold be- 
fore the mind ever more and more complex relations, 
— a faculty supremely serviceable in mastering com- 
plexities of relation in the economic, in the political 
spheres, in the sphere of international intercourse, in 
the sphere of the social relations in general, and wher- 
ever the ethical principle has to be applied. The sci- 
entific occupation trains powers which are to be exer- 
cised so as to illuminate obscurities in the ethical field. 



THE VOCATIONS 265 

The frustration which the scientist meets with when 
he reflects in thoroughgoing fashion on the business he 
has in hand is the inevitable reahzation that Alles 
VergdnglicTie ist nur ein Gleichniss, that the sphere of 
the finite in which he labors, though capable of indefinite 
extension, is forever incapable of being rounded out to 
a true infinity, and hence that the complete unification 
of the manifold (in which alone the reality-producing 
functions of the mind can find repose and ultimate satis- 
faction), can never be carried out in the manifold of 
juxtaposition and sequence with which, as a physical 
scientist, he deals. He will thus be led to face in 
thought the limits of what is finitely attainable, not only 
by hun as an individual scientist, but by physical science 
in general. And in proportion as his spiritual nature 
is energetic it will then assert itself all the more resil- 
iently after this defeat, and turn in a new direction, and 
towards another kind of truth, the truth which is dis- 
covered in the realm of willj in the sphere of intercourse 
with fellow human beings. The propedeutic result of 
science with respect to ethical personality is the train- 
ing of the more complex mental faculties. The posi- 
tive result following the frustration is the new turn to- 
ward the spiritual, the escape from the spell wherewith 
the physical world enchains the mind, the dissipating of 
the widespread illusion that the truths of physical science 
are the only kind of truth, the more determined setting 
of the face towards a different kind of truth. The sci- 
entist, in brief, is to travel along the paths of the finite 
in order to arrive and stand at the gate of the infinite. 

I have said that the boon of personality is gained in 



266 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

intercourse with others, through the influence which we 
exert on others. How does the scientist as a scientist 
spiritually affect others? The great specific service, as 
I have just said, which he is to render is to destroy the 
illusion that the material world is a finality. And it is 
just he, the scientist, who works most successfully in the 
field of physical truth who must assist the rest of us in 
escaping from the spell to which we are all subject. He 
is the one, he who more than others succeeds in unifying 
the manifold of juxtaposition and sequence, to whom we 
look to liberate others as well as himself from the decep- 
tive belief that the reality-producing functions of the hu- 
man mind can be satisfied in the temporal and spatial 
manifold. Not from the tyro, not from the purveyor of 
"popular science" can we hope to learn the profoundest 
lessons as to the incapacity of physical nature to appease 
the spirit of man. It is from the familiar friend of na- 
ture, from one more deeply read than we are in her se- 
crets, that we are to obtain this great instruction, to re- 
ceive this boon. 

Ethics is a science of reactions. Each vocation re- 
acts upon the others. The general reaction of science I 
have mentioned. In addition the work of the scientist 
reacts upon agriculture, industry, etc. The industrial 
arts, as has been stated, are to be regarded as the execu- 
tive auxiliaries of science, receiving from it the knowl- 
edge of the uniformities of nature, and in turn setting 
for science new problems by attention to which scien- 
tific theory is advanced. 

The relations of science to art also need to be con- 
sidered at greater length than is possible here. I have 



THE VOCATIONS 267 

in mind inquiries into the scientific basis of music like 
those of Heknholtz, the sci^itific theory of color and the 
like, and also detailed studies of the return gift which 
art confers on science, especially the value to the scientist 
of that cultivation of the imagination which is gained by 
the contemplation and study of works of art. There are 
different kinds of imagination: the purely artistic, the 
scientific, the mechanical imagination, the ethical imag- 
ination. The function of the imagination in advancing 
science has been discussed by Tyndall and others, but the 
subject is far indeed from being exhausted. 

The scientist then may be defined as one who stands 
in reciprocal relations to all other departments of hu- 
man interest and activity, who gives to each from his 
specific standpoint as a scientist, and receives from each, 
from religion,^ from art, from the practical vocations, 
etc. Ideally speaking, every man participates in all 
the principal interests and activities of the human mind. 
Every man is something of an artist, something of a 
practical or executive worker, scientist, religious being. 
But in each individual the different interests are colored 
by his special pursuit, and the influence he wields in re- 
turn is modified in the same fashion.^ 

^ All that I have said in the beginning as to the relation of the 
finite and the infinite belongs under this head. 

2 There is one point too obvious to be overlooked, but perhaps it 
had better be expressly mentioned. The scientist helps us to build 
our world, the physical nest in which we live, first by mastering 
nature's procedures, then by making possible inventions, which in- 
crease the security of our footing in the physical world; dispense 
us from the brute task of pitting our merely physical strength 
against the forces of nature; render communication between distant 



268 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

There are three great tasks that occupy human life: 

1. To build our finite world (science and its ad- 
juncts). 

2. To create in the finite the semblance of the infinite, 
or spiritual relation (art). 

3. To strive to realize the spiritual relation in human 
intercourse (ethics and religion) . 

This discussion of science affords me the oppor- 
tunity to give an exact definition of the word **instru- 
mental" as I use it. And the word "instrumental" is 
of decisive importance as to the entire ethical conception 
of life. Instrumental in what sense? The finite ends 
of man are to be the means used in the pursuit of the 
infinite end. But in what manner are they to be the 
means? To be a cheerful world-builder, to take an ac- 
tive and whole-hearted interest in the improvement of 
material conditions, in political reforms, in the embel- 
lishment of earthly life — how is it possible to do this and 
at the same time keep the spiritual end in view as the 
supreme end? 

Christianity in its pristine form,^ abandons the task 
in dismay. Instead of seeking action in the finite world 
as a means, it counsels renunciation and withdrawal. 
Modern social reform movements, on the other hand, 
are devoted to finite ends, more or less ignoring the 
spiritual. How is it possible to work in the world, in 
the finite sphere, for an end beyond the finite ? The an- 
swer, as I have shown in the case of science and the 

peoples feasible, and thereby lay the first foundation for an inter- 
national society. 

^ Vide Introduction to the First Book. 



THE VOCATIONS 269 

same applies to all other vocations), is to be found in 
the words "partial success and frustration." The finite, 
lessei ends, are means to the highest end in so far as we 
are partially able to embody the spiritual relation in the 
finite world, and in so far as the inevitable defeat of 
our effort to do so serves to implant in us the convic- 
tion of the reality of the infinite ethical ideal. 

The points contained in this chapter may be briefly 
summarized as follows : 

What is the relation of science to the ethical end? 
We are seeking to link up the world to spirit. Along 
what line can the connection be marked out in the case of 
science? Science is instrumental in founding more se- 
curely the empirical basis of self-respect, inasmuch as 
it gives to man to a certain extent a sense of mastery over 
nature. With the help of science he feels himself no 
longer the helpless sport of nature's forces. 

The training in complex thinking afforded by science 
is favorable to the ethical reformer. Science also inci- 
dentally encourages the virtues of veracity, and the 
like. 

Knowledge for knowledge's sake cannot be the final 
end of the pursuit of science, since the world of space 
and time with which science deals is not only not as 
yet rationalized but is not ultimately rationalizable. 

While in all the respects just mentioned the pursuit 
of science is indirectly instrumental to the spiritual end 
— instrumental to the instrument — it is directly instru- 
mental to it in so far as, at the hand of the supreme 
scientist, man is conducted through the finite as far as 
the gate of the infinite. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PRACTICAL VOCATIONS 

Medicine is the executive of the science of physi- 
ology, and the others, on which it depends. The physi- 
cian has a certain work to do, a certain need to satisfy — 
the need of health, the alleviation of pain. In endeavor- 
ing to satisfy this need he uses the sciences that under- 
lie his vocation and in turn promotes those sciences. 

On the lower levels of agriculture and the industrial 
arts the same holds true. Our physical necessities vocif- 
erously demand satisfaction. They cannot wait. Men 
must have food or they perish. The agriculturist sup- 
plies the food they need. But the spiritual view of life 
declares that man, while engaged in satisfying his mate- 
rial wants, shall in so doing assert his spiritual nature. 
He is to hammer out his personality on the anvil of his 
empirical necessities. Even as human beings do not par- 
take of food like animals, but indicate by the manner in 
which they take it the superior worth of the being who 
is dependent on food, so the agriculturist who raises the 
food should testify to his spiritual character. He does 
so in part at least by his reaction on the sciences which 
he applies, biology, chemistry, etc. The same holds 
good of the industrial occupations. The work a man 
does should be the means of promoting the development 
of his mental and sesthetic nature, and of his will. The 

270 



THE PRACTICAL VOCATIONS 271 

mental and sesthetic development is acquired by mas- 
tering and reacting on the science and the art that enter 
into the trade. The development of the will, the most 
important of all, depends on the organic relations of the 
industrial workers among themselves and to their chiefs. 

This raises the problem of the right organization of 
"industrial vocationalists" from the ethical point of 
view, and the following questions present themselves: 
Shall the present division into the two hostile camps of 
trade-unionists and employers continue? Or is it to be 
regarded as a makeshift, perhaps necessary during the 
present period of transition, but certainly untenable in 
the long run? Is the uniform arrangement contem- 
plated by Socialism desirable, the government of every 
industry and indeed of every vocation by the represen- 
tatives of the community as a whole? Shall what is 
called cooperation be adopted, that is, the formation of 
independent groups of workers on the voluntary prin- 
ciple, associated for the purpose of equably dividing the 
profits? 

The three alternatives mentioned may be examined 
from various points of view. Here we consider them 
from the ethical point of view. Assuming that the 
ethical end of life is to be supreme, what kind of indus- 
trial re-organization of society will be most in harmony 
with it? All three plans are open to the ethical objec- 
tion that they concentrate attention on the material gain 
to be derived from the industry instead of on the specific 
service which those who follow the industry as a voca- 
tion are to render. Collective bargaining between 
unions and employers is after all just bargaining. So- 



272 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

cialism differs from trade-unionism not in the object 
so much as in the means. Instead of securing for the 
workers a larger share it would secure for them at once 
an approximately equal share. Cooperation aims at 
the same result as Socialism by voluntary association in- 
stead of by collective compulsion. 

None of the three plans is ethically satisfying, and a 
fourth arrangement should be contemplated. Its char- 
acteristics are the following: 

1. The idea of service to be pre-eminent instead of 
the gain, the wage or salary to be apportioned as the 
means of sustaining the worker in the best possible per- 
formance of the service. 

2. The work done by the workers to be the means of 
developing them mentally, gesthetically and volition- 
ally, the educational features therefore to be pre- 
eminent. 

3. The industrial group to be transformed into a so- 
cial sub-organism (in the ethical sense a sub-organ of 
the larger organism of the nation). By this is meant 
that the employers cease to be employers and become 
functionaries, while each worker in his place and in his 
degree likewise becomes a functionary. A common 
social service group will thus be formed embracing the 
chiefs and the humbler workers. The chiefs will be the 
executive and administrative functionaries, and will be 
safeguarded in the due discharge of their proper func- 
tions. The workers will not attempt to wrest from their 
chiefs as they do at present the directive functions which 
properly belong to the latter (subject, however, to due 
control). To each of the lesser functionaries in turn 



THE PRACTICAL VOCATIONS 273 

will be assigned a sphere within which a relative inde- 
pendence would be his. 

The industry as a whole will be an organ of the cor- 
pus sociale, and this its character will be expressed in its 
government. The workers, not required to render im- 
plicit obedience to rules imposed upon them by masters 
and superintendents, will have a voice in the legislation 
of the industry, in framing the policy of the industry, 
in electing the chiefs, and in this way the development 
of the will, upon which I lay the greatest stress, will 
be attained. The will of the worker, at present fet- 
tered, will be liberated by the opportunity given it to 
become enlightened and eiFectual. 

1 I am not here describing a scheme which is to be im- 
mediately launched in its completeness. I am illustrat- 
ing the ethical principle as I see it as applied to this 
particular vocation. I am endeavoring to show how an 
occupation can be changed into a vocation. The con- 
stitutional government of industries would be an inter- 
mediate stage between the present autocratic form, in 
which more or less absolute power is vested in the em- 
ployer, and that organic constitution of industry which 
is ethically desirable. 

Thus far the following plans have been before the 
minds of social reformers: 

A. Competition, or life and death struggle. 

B. Modified competition, or raising the plane of com- 
petition, as it is called, that is, doing away with the more 
ferocious and unscrupulous methods of competition. 

C. Socialism. 

D. Cooperation, 



274. AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

I propose to add (E) organization in the ethical sense. 
The word "organization" is deplorably misused at pres- 
ent. It is commonly employed as a synonym for aggre- 
gation, which is the very reverse of organization. Thus 
"organized labor" really means aggregate labor, labor 
acting en rrmsse. 

A further remark on the difference between indus- 
trial vocationalism as outlined and Socialism may be of 
use in clarifying the main idea. The relative indepen- 
dence of the social sub-organism is the salient point. 
This kind of independence is based on the general con- 
ception underlying my entire ethical philosophy, that 
the ethical quality resides in uniqueness in distinctive- 
ness, that ethical progress consists in driving towards 
individualization in the sense of personalization. This as 
opposed to those philosophies of life that see the ethical 
quality in uniformity. Socialism is on the side of uni- 
formity. It is indeed an extreme expression of it. If 
sometimes it is urged that the relative independence of 
the vocational groups might be recognized in the social- 
istic state, the answer is that the tendency would be in 
the opposite direction. And besides, the allrimportant 
question is to what end the relative independence is to 
be used. Under socialism it would be used for the pur- 
pose of juicreasing the quantity of valuable products at 
the disposal of the community as a whole. 'Frona the 
ethical point of view, the independence of the organic 
group would be used to insure reciprocal relations, and 
by means of these the development mentally, sestheticaUy 
and volitionally of the producers. The distinction cer- 



THE PRACTICAL VOCATIONS 275 

tainly is clear enough to its members, whichever way 
the reader may inchne.^ 

The Historical Sciences 

I refer now briefly to historical science. The ethical 
aim of history and its adjunct sciences is to redeem 
from oblivion as far as is possible the past of the human 
race, its documents, its monuments, the knowledge of 
its political adventures, its customs, laws and institu- 
tions, its religious beliefs. In view of the lacunae in 
our knowledge a complete revival of the past is im- 
possible. We must therefore principally seek to under- 
stand the ruling ideas that have governed our ances- 
tors, in the family, in the state, etc. The task of the 
historian is to present these ideas as seen in the light of 
their consequences, so as to help us revalue them from 
the point of view of present experience and insight. The 

^ The vocational group must be independent because the expert 
familiar with the conditions under which a service is performed is 
specially competent to decide on the improvements required to ren- 
der the conditions more favorable to the development of human 
nature, the service more adequate. The representatives of the col- 
lective community, that is of the inexpert, outside mass (inexpert 
in respect to this particular service) can never perform the same 
office. 

Witli regard to the present state of industry the gigantic obstacle 
in the way of improvement is obviously the subjection of the man to 
the machine. The great hardship which the millions of factory 
operatives suffer is not only the insufficient wage, it is the deperson- 
alizing effect produced by the substitution of the machine for the 
hand and the blind subjection of adult workers to the arbitrary 
will of superiors. (Compare what I have said on this subject in 
the chapter on "Aq Ethical Programme of Social Eeform" in The 
World Cnsis*') 



276 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

historian will thus enable us to carry over from the past 
what is truly valuable, for the business we have in hand. 

There is just now a strong reaction against the kind 
of historical science which deals principally with wars 
and the actions of princes or of great leaders. Detailed 
attention is being given to the more obscure life of the 
people. But it must be remembered that mere penetra- 
tion into the lower strata of bygone societies, the mere 
heaping up of facts concerning mass movements, is as 
unprofitable as the more picturesque recitals with which 
works on history were formerly adorned. The mass 
movements and the ideas which gave rise to them should 
be set clear as far as possible ; but without the evaluation 
and the revaluation, or the ethical appraisement, the 
voluminous knowledge of details is merely stupefying, 
and leaves us as much at sea as ever.^ 

Many men have read many books on history, and 
filled their minds with information on subjects like the 
Protestant Reformation or the French Revolution, 
without being in the least wiser themselves, or more 
fitted to enlighten others in respect to the religious and 
ethical problems which were involved in these great 
movements, and which still touch us so closely today. 
As to the ordinary high school or college student, what 
as a rule does he carry away from his study of past "his- 
tory"? 

^ Think of Mommsen, the author of a thousand treatises, whose 
knowledge of the facts of Roman history was unsurpassed and 
probably unequalled. Yet is his judgment on Caesar or Caesarism 
helpful as an ethical appraisement? 



CHAPTER V 

THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST: OUTLINE OF A 
THEORY OF THE RELATION OF ART TO ETHICS 

The three great directions of effort are: to work in 
the finite ; to create in the finite the semblance of the in- 
finite; to realize through effort the reality of the in- 
finite. The vocation of the artist is to create the sem- 
blance of the spiritual relation between the parts of an 
empirical object. The object may be a vase or a lamp ; 
it may be a human figure, it may be a group of dramatis 
personae. By introducing into the discussion of art 
the idea that a semblance of the spiritual relation is to 
be produced by the artist, we get rid at the outset of 
the barren formula of unity in variety. 

Let me endeavor to elucidate the main ideas that flow 
from this definition of the spiritual aim of art. 

1. The two points to be discussed are: What is 
meant by semblance? and What is meant by the quasi- 
spiritual relation as subsisting between the parts of a 
work of Art? 

First, then, there is the semblance of totality. The 
spiritual relation is characterized by the totality of the 

IT V. - 

parts related. That totality is realized only in the uni- 
versal manifold. But a semblance of totality is fur- 
nished in the case of colors by the circumstance that the 
chromatic scale is cut off at the bottom and top in conse- 
quence of our inability to perceive the colors below and 

277 



278 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

above ; the musical scale likewise presents a quasi-totality, 
and the human figure in its contours presents a thing 
cut off from its surroundings, and in so far relatively- 
complete in itself. 

Because the spiritual relation involves the idea of the 
perfect totality, a relative totality, due to the accidental 
limitations of our sensory organs and power of attention, 
may become a semblance of the spiritual totality. I say, 
may become, A certain relation must be established be- 
tween the parts of the relative totality in order that the 
semblance shall result. 

One thing is clear; the subject of the work of art 
must possess relative completeness, and be capable of 
being contemplated as circumscribed and separated off. 
It must stand out like a tree, or like an oasis encircled 
by the desert, or like an island. The subject of art can- 
not be a mere length of cloth cut off from the fabric 
of things as they reel unceasingly from the loom of 
time — the mistake of Realism. 

The point, emphasized in our third Book, namely, 
that an empirical substratum is to be spiritualized, and 
that ethics consists in spiritualizing this physical and 
psychical substratum, applies to art, but with the dif- 
ference, that in the case of art the physical or psychical 
substratum cannot be spiritualized, but is to be made to 
take on the semblance of spirituality. 

Now what is meant by this kind of transformation? 
I can perhaps explain by using as an illustration the 
color scheme of a picture. The transformation appears 
in the difference between the colors on the palette and 



THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST 279 

the colors on the canvas. The colors on the palette rep- 
resent the empirical substratum, the natural colors; the 
colors seen on the canvas show the same natural tints 
after they have taken on a new or second nature. 

The second nature, — in what does it consist? In the 
circumstance that each color on the canvas, by its juxta- 
position and its relation to the rest, is altered in tone 
and value, and that all the rest are altered by it. The 
spiritual relation is a give and take relation actually 
carried out. The semblance produced in art is the il- 
lusive appearance of such a relation as seen by the be- 
holder. 

We have thus set down two points — the apparent 
totality, and the apparent give and take relation be- 
tween the parts (the second nature assumed by the 
parts, the illusory transformation of the substratum) . 

A third point involved in the second is that each part 
of a work of art shall remain invincibly individualized, 
despite the closeness of the relation which connects it 
with the rest. The individual member of a work of art 
may never be submerged in the whole, may never merely 
convey the abstract idea of unity amid variation. The 
"unity in variety" formula is not only empty but mis- 
leading, based on the same misconception which we have 
noted in dealing with Kant and with the Pantheists. 
The unity of a work of art consists in the reciprocal ef- 
fect produced by the members on each other. Hence 
the more accentuated, the more distinctive the members 
are, always provided that the reciprocal relation is main- 
tained, the more artistically satisfying will be the re- 



280 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

suit. In this manner the work of art will be true to its 
essential character as a semblance of the spiritual rela- 
tion, 

I have thus far spoken of the form. In regard to 
content I have only remarked that it must be capable 
of relative detachment. It must also be capable of in- 
terior articulation. The idea that an empirical substra- 
tum is to be transformed will here be found helpful in de- 
termining what is and what is not a fit subject for art. 
A vase or a pitcher is a utensil. As such it is a de- 
tached thing. Is it capable of articulation without de- 
stroying its utility? If it is, as the beautiful vases show, 
it is a fit subject for art to treat. The embellishment 
of utensils, of tables, chairs, etc., that is to say, the giv- 
ing of artistic form to objects with which we bodily 
come into contact, is a means of casting the appear- 
ance of the spiritual relation over these objects, and 
thus in a fine sense making them congenial to ourselves 
as spiritual personalities. This justifies the time spent 
by artist artisans on their handiwork, and also justifies 
our availing ourselves of their products (provided that 
the store set by these symbolic reminders of the spiritual 
relation do not divert us from the main business of life, 
which is to attempt to realize that relation in human 
intercourse) . The war song sung by a primitive tribe 
is a detachable, empirical thing, and possesses natural 
articulation. It has its slow beginning, its gradual rise, 
its paroxysmic culminations, its wild ecstasy, its final 
dying down. 

The love passion expressed in lyric form has for its 



THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST 281 

basis the natural ups and downs, dejections and trans- 
ports characteristic of that passion. 

The theme of a tragedy, as Aristotle says, must have 
a beginning, a middle, and an end. Repetition (always 
with a difference), contrast, apparent triumph, defeat, 
and somehow a triumph in defeat — whatever may be 
the elements with which the tragic poet deals, the crude 
substance of them is furnished by the theme itself. And 
the result becomes artistic when the articulation is such 
that each part becomes a member of an organized whole, 
that is, when each part exchanges its first nature for the 
second nature mentioned above in connection with paint- 
ing, ^ 

The next point of interest to consider is whether 
Deauty is to be regarded as the invariable object of art. 
Relative detachment and susceptibility to articulation in 
the manner described are indispensable. But if tragedy 
is to be included, beauty cannot be the exclusive ob- 

^ Aristotle regards the (Edipus Rex as the most perfect exam- 
ple of tragedy ; let it serve the purpose of illustrating the idea here 
proposed. Read the play and get the total impression of it. An- 
alyze it into its parts. Synthesize after the analysis. You will not 
fail to realize how every character, every speech and act, contrib- 
utes to the total effect, and how in turn every single factor in the 
play receives a new significance from its relation to the rest, while 
still retaining its obvious meaning (the meaning it would have when 
taken out of the context of the play). Take the first speech of 
CEdipus as an example. He is the king solicitous for the welfare 
of his subjects, to whom they look up with admiration and gratitude. 
He is the father of his people. Read this speech again after you 
have taken in the entire play, and note how its color is changed. 
How the firmness, the fatherly, protective attitude is now seen to 
be the outward mask of a fugitive soul, unsure of itself, haunted by 
hideous fears. 



282 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ject. Lear, on the heath, the harpy daughters, Lear and 
Cordelia perishing together, are not beautiful objects. 
The task of the artist is to produce the semblance of the 
spiritual relation in any material which is capable of 
bearing that imprint. In the great tragedies we are 
lifted into an exalted mood by the form of the work even 
though the subject treated evokes horror — ^perhaps be- 
cause of the very contrast between the form and the sub- 
ject-matter. Beauty, on the other hand, is produced 
when both subject-matter and form are satisfying to our 
needs or aspirations. A vase is beautiful when perfectly 
adapted to its use and at the same time perfect in form. 
For this reason any kind of embellishment, for instance, 
in architecture not structurally in place is offensive, 
while on the other hand mere structural utility without 
the formal touch is mechanical. It is not true that utility 
itself inevitably flowers into beauty. 

It should be added, however, that the artistic expres- 
sion even of unsatisfied desires may come within the 
scope of beauty. The "Lycidas" is beautiful, Words- 
worth's "Laodamia" is beautiful, the Gothic form of 
architecture is beautiful, and so is Keats' "Ode to the 
Nightingale," and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." 
In such productions the adequate expression of the need 
itself affords relief and induces tranquillity. The mind 
ceases to strive toward a beyond longed for, and rests 
tranquillized in the longing itself. That it should thus 
aspire and long, in consequence of its higher nature, and 
the assurance of the existence of this higher nature, as 
evidenced by the longing, is peacegiving. 

But it is hardly possible to discuss even in the mo3t 



THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST 283 

cursory manner the subject matter or content of a work 
of art without drawing attention to the ideals which at 
various times have been expressed in art, and to the 
function of art in respect to these ideals. For here the 
grandeur of the great art as connected with the ulti- 
mate aim and purpose of life appears. 

Art in its fictions has endeavored to present to men 
the solution of the problem of life, the things most worth 
striving for. The ideals, of course, have varied. In 
the Greek epic the heroes contend around the walls of 
wind-swept Ilion. They themselves are wind-swept ap- 
paritions. Life is short; presently they too will pass 
out of sight, yet their names and deeds will live after 
them. Fate is inscrutable. There is no ulterior mean- 
ing in things. To glitter for a time in shining armor, 
and then to be remembered in the song of the rhapso- 
dists is alone worth while. It is this ideal of life that 
Homer records. 

The romantic ideal of feudalism is reflected in the 
poems of chivalry. The ideal of the English Renascence 
is found in Shakespeare. The religious ideals are ex- 
pressed in the Hindu temples, in the Parthenon, in the 
mediaeval cathedrals, and in the poems of Dante and 
Milton. The ideals of the oriental monarchs are visibly 
embodied in the Assyrian and Babylonian palaces ; the 
ideal of the merchant class in the stones of Venice, in 
the architecture of the German and Flemish cities, etc. 
The plastic arts especially owe their rise and prosperity 
to the princely and religious ideals — to the demand for 
temples, churches and palaces suitable for monarchs or 
merchant princes to dwell and worship in. The aim of 



284 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the artificer is to furnish a splendid setting for princes 
and divinities. 

Mankind at different periods is in labor to give birth 
to ideals representing the purpose for which man 
exists, or the things that make life worth while, and art 
assists in bringing to the birth these ideals. It seeks to 
express them, and in the effort to do so it helps to de- 
velop and clarify them. This, and not merely to give 
pleasure, is its grand function. 

In an age like the present, in which a new ideal is in 
the early stages of formation, art is likely to become, 
as in fact it has become, uncertain of its function, and 
hence apt to lose its direction, either turning back to the 
servile reproduction of past art forms, or seeking to 
achieve progress in the perfection of technical detail, or 
in the ways of subjective impressionism.^ 

The efforts of a serious artist today, in so far as he 
undertakes to assist in bringing to the birth a new ideal 
by his endeavor to express it, must necessarily be ten- 
tative, if not crude. But such as they are their worth, 
if wholly sincere, can hardly be overestimated. 

In the vocation of the artist, as everywhere, the three- 
fold reverence is the capital point. Reverence for the 
great masters, as shown not in slavishly copying them, 
but in understanding the qualities that made them great, 
and in delivering from past art the things that are to be 

^ The use made of pageantry, the revival of English and other 
folk-songs, the morris-dances and the like, the attempt to ennoble 
the leisure of the industrial workers by leading them back to forms 
of art which sprang up centuries ago in foreign countries, is evi- 
dence of the keen desire for art rather than a step in a new direc- 
tion. 



THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST 285 

reincorporated and to live oil; reverence for those who 
in different fields are intent on the problem of art to- 
day — all this to prepare the way for future artists, for 
the greater art that is to come. 

The relation of art to ethics, or to the spiritual life, is 
now sufficiently clear. In general it is to produce the 
semblance of the spiritual relation, and thereby to re- 
juvenate the world's workers, to give them the joy of 
relative perfection, and thus to stimulate them to per- 
severe in the real business of life, which is to approxi- 
mate toward actual perfection. The specific task of the 
artist at its height is to enshrine in his creation the ideals 
of the age with respect to the ultimate purpose of human 
existence, and in the endeavor so to incorporate them as 
to assist in defining them. 

The dangers of pre-occupation with art, however, 
must not be passed over. Just because it creates the 
illusion of perfection it is apt to encourage the indolence 
of our nature, which ever prefers to content itself with 
illusion, and to desist from effort. It is on this account 
that periods in which art greatly flourishes are apt to 
lead to the halting of progress and eventually to decay. 
A second danger is that the artist, in applying the ideal 
of present perfection, is in danger of selfishly subordi- 
nating other persons to himself (cf. Goethe as a notable 
example) , or of setting up a special kind of morality for 
artists.^ 

^ Art, like science, is to be subordinate. The relation between 
persons and persons is mankind's supreme concern. The views 
above expressed differ radically from those of Schiller. See his 
Esthetic Education of Man, 



286 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

In a full account of the matter, the different so-called 
fine arts should be specifically treated from the point of 
view of this chapter. The particular contribution of 
each to the general purpose of art should be noted, the 
distinctions marked between painting, sculpture, poetry, 
etc., and in each case the kind of art which is favorable 
to the spiritual development of man be discriminated 
from that which is hostile to it. Plato attempted to do 
this in the case of music. 

To summarize: What has been attempted in this 
chapter is a theory not of art but of the relation of art 
to ethics. The dominating thought is this: in a work 
of art each line, color, sound, word, must be irreplace- 
able, and on that account convincing. Each member 
must be indispensable in its place and the connection 
with the rest inevitable. Substitute for line, color, 
sound, etc., a life — an ethical being, — conceive the mem- 
bers to be not a few but in nimaber infinite, and you have 
the spiritual ideal, which is the reality whereof the art 
work is a semblance. This is the relation of art to ethics 
— the quality which we call in art "convincing," in ethics 
we call "worth," 

NOTES 

As one example architecture may be mentioned. Architecture 
furnishes the envelope for the social life, the dwelling, the nest 
of the family, the workshops that house the vocational life, the 
public buildings that provide a habitation for the political life, 
the temples, the churches that enshrine the religious life. The 
relation of the enshrining dwelHng to the inner social life should 
be the same as that of the body to the soul in sculpture. That 
which goes on within should be significantly indicated exter- 



THE VOCATION OF THE ARTIST 287 

nally. The progress of architecture will depend on its holding 
fast to this idea, and changing the outside as the inner life 
changes. Thus, we have, or are beginning to have, a concep- 
tion of the family very different from that which prevailed at 
the time when the princely mansions of the Renaissance were 
built. To reproduce these princely mansions because they 
beautifully expressed the princely idea is a mistake. To provide 
a proper dwelling-place for the modern family the architect 
should clearly apprehend what functions go on in the 
family, what the distribution of functions should be, and the 
rank to be assigned to the different functions. There is to be, 
for instance, in addition to the ordinary requirements, provi- 
sion for separate study rooms, places of retirement, refuges of 
intellectual solitude for the adult members; a playroom for 
children, a place of reunion for the household religion. The 
formation of a number of families into a larger group {vid, 
supra) would help in the solution of this problem. 

In like manner the conception of what a religious society 
should be is changing. The church-building, the Mosque, the 
Synagogue, certainly no longer declare the spirit and the pur- 
pose that animate the new religious fellowships that are form- 
ing among us today. The progress of architecture will thus 
depend, not on the out of hand invention of new styles, but on a 
thorough understanding of the new kmd of life which is to he 
dormciled within buildings, accepting this as the empirical sub- 
stratum, and articulating it in accordance with the spiritual re- 
lation of give and take between the parts ; and the architect will 
assist in clarifying the ideal of the new kind of Hfe that is to be 
lived within the buildings by endeavoring to give it outward 
expression. 

One more remark : The limitations opposed to the artist, for 
instance to the sculptor, by the material in which he works, are 
a helpful illustration of one of the most important ethical 
truths. The material is found to be intractable to the idea. 
The hardness of the stone, the veins that run through the mar- 
ble, the unpropitious qualities of the wood, are so many hin- 



288 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

drances to execution. The value of these hindrances is that 
they compel the artist to achieve a more definite grasp of the 
Ideal Itself. Before the attempt to carry it out Into stone, the 
idea Is apt to be vague In the mind of the artist. The same is 
true of every ideal conception — that of the author before he 
writes a book, that of the social reformer before he attempts 
to carry his scheme Into practice. And it applies no less to the 
ethical Ideal of life in general. The empirical analogue or sub- 
stratum Is ductile to a certain degree, else we could never 
achieve even partial success. But it is also hostile and mutin- 
ous In many ways, and the fact that it is so compels us to adapt 
our ideal to existing empirical requirements, and to make It 
more explicit in the process of adapting it. 



CHAPTER VI 

EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS, OR VOCATIONS CON- 
NECTED WITH THE STATE 

Every vocation on its ethical side is educational. The 
reason for accentuating the educational aspect of the vo- 
cations connected with the state is that this educational 
significance is generally overlooked. The vocations re- 
ferred to are those of the lawyer, the judge, the states- 
man, the teacher in the narrower sense of the word (the 
teacher in schools and universities) . 

The Vocation of the Lawyer 

Vocation, as I use the term, invariably means related 
to the spiritual end of life. A profession or occupation 
becomes a vocation when he who follows it seeks to re- 
spond to the call of the latent spiritual possibilities in his 
f ellowmen. If this be not the common definition of call- 
ing or vocation, yet I think it will bear scrutiny. It is 
the vocation of the lawyer to be the teacher of justice 
to his clients, — I mean of justice in so far as it is al- 
ready embodied in law, — and at the same time to pro- 
mote a desire for and a preliminary understanding of 
the justice which is not yet embodied in law. 

The lawyer is commonly regarded as the learned alter 
ego of his client. The lawyer is the client as he would 

289 



290 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

be if he were versed in the law, and skilled to employ 
it in his interest. The client is supposed to be an egotist, 
intent solely on securing his advantage to the fullest 
extent possible under the existing system of social 
regulations. The lawyer is his expert substitute. The 
judge appears on the scene as the impartial represen- 
tative of the law. 

From the vocational point of view the lawyer is an 
assistant to the judge, the agent not so much of his 
client as of justice. He is as much interested in the 
just issue of the suit as is his legal opponent. His edu- 
cational function is to teach his client to take the same 
point of view. Another point, no less important, is the 
following: Law is a system of general rules, at best a 
rude social mechanics. And even as such it is constantly 
deflected from its ostensible purpose by selfishness and 
prejudice. The discriminations against women, the con- 
spiracy laws against combinations of laborers, the laws 
enacted in the interests of landed aristocracies, are ample 
evidence in point. In every country the law as it stands 
is still largely infected with unfair discriminations, and 
it is the special duty of those who follow the legal voca- 
tion to open the eyes of their clients and of the public 
to these defects and to suggest remedies. 

Every vocation has its special vice, that is, a kind 
of behavior the very opposite of that prescribed by the 
particular ethical function with which it is charged. The 
vice of the lawyer is blind conservatism (unless he is at 
the same time progressive and conservative he fails to 
fulfil his ethical function) . 

The judge, too, is a teacher, especially in criminal 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 291 

cases. The voice of the judge, when he pronounces sen- 
tence on a criminal, should reverberate throughout the 
whole of society, awakening all men to the fact that so- 
ciety as such shares the guilt. 

The Vocation of the Statesman 

What I have to say on this subject will find its proper 
setting in the next chapter. In general, it is the voca- 
tion of the statesman to teach the citizens a sublime con- 
ception of the state. He is neither to be the obedient 
tool of the mass — the docile "public servant" in that 
sense — nor yet to impose his arbitrary will upon the 
people, consulting only his own genius. The one type 
is seen in the average American politician, who is or af- 
fects to be a mere instrument executing the public will ; 
the other type is exemplified by the supermen states- 
men of ancient and modern times. The ethically- 
minded statesman is to evoke the spiritual conception of 
the State in the minds of his constituents, and in the 
process of doing so to become more essentially a citizen 
himself. 

The Vocation of the Educator 

It was unavoidable to discuss the vocations and their 
aims before considering the school, college and univer- 
sity; for these institutions are orientated towards the 
vocations, are preparatory to the latter, and the true aim 
of school and university cannot possibly be defined un- 
less the vocational outlook be first distinctly spread be- 
fore our eyes. 

In dealing with the vocation of the teacher, I shall 



292 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

necessarily be led to define the purpose of the social in- 
stitution in which he labors and I shall for the sake of 
brevity use the word school to designate the social organs 
of education, which cover the period of childhood, adoles- 
cence and the beginning of manhood and womanhood. 

The school is like the hundred-gated Thebes. It leads 
out into a hundred vocational avenues. But note the fol- 
lowing: its aim is far greater than merely to prepare the 
student for that future vocation to which he is best 
suited. It should no less supply the incentive for creat- 
ing new vocations, and for changing what are at present 
still occupations into vocations. The school searches out 
the individuality of its pupils. It undertakes to differ- 
entiate and to personalize individualities. But when it 
has done its part, it sends the pupils into a world where 
little account is taken of the finer differences of aptitude, 
where occupations predominate and vocations are few, 
and where most things, ethically speaking, are still in 
the rough. The school cannot indeed transform society 
by merely raising its indignant voice and asking society 
to pay heed to the finer things which it has fostered, and 
which often are subsequently crushed. But it can at 
least contribute to the vocational evolution of society by 
reiterating its unsatisfied demands. 

Taking the three-fold reverence for my guide, I lay it 
down in the first place that the school is an organ of 
tradition. True conservatism has its place in the school. 
In it are preserved the knowledges and the skills of the 
past. The heir of today comes to his own by appro- 
priating the products of past thinking and past labor, 
and the school superintends the process of appro- 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 293 

priation and assimilation. At the same time it sifts in 
tradition what is clean from what is unclean, what is 
true from what is false, what is usable from what is dead. 
Reverence is shown in this very sifting process. To re- 
vere the past is to make the past live again; but only 
what is vital can go on living. 

The teaching should be reverential in spirit. The 
business spirit, the drive towards mere efficiency, cannot 
in the long run satisfy. Efficiency as commonly under- 
stood has in view the utilities of the moment. It merely 
exploits the past for the sake of present interests, and 
as a rule is unmindful of the future. Industrial ef- 
ficiency, in particular, reverses the right ethical relation 
between work and personality; instead of work being 
so contrived as to liberate personality, it is mechanized 
so as to sacrifice personality. 

The teacher should be reverent towards the great mas- 
ters of his own craft, his own art. No one is reverenced 
by others who does not himself habitually revere some- 
one. The teachers should be acquainted at first hand 
with the master educators, such as Plato, Comenius, 
Pestalozzi and the others. 

I pass on to speak of the second type of reverence. 
This involves cordial reciprocally stimulating relations 
between the members of the teaching staff. It is gen- 
erally agreed that no other factor counts for more in 
shaping the character of the young than personal in- 
fluence. The best personal influence, however, is not 
unilateral, like that which radiates from a single teacher 
upon his class. The best is that which proceeds from 
cross-relations between a number of teachers. Just as in 



294 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the home it is not the father singly, nor the mother 
singly, but the reciprocal relations between the two that 
touch child life to finer issues and create a spiritual at- 
mosphere in the learner, so also in the school the best 
spirit is created by the relations of reciprocal further- 
ance between the teachers, each doing his work in sudi a 
way as to make easier and more successful the work of 
his colleagues, with a strong sense of partnership in the 
common work of man-building. 

The teachers as an organized body should also relate 
themselves to an organized body of parents. Home and 
school should not merely cooperate but interpenetrate. 
The interests and efforts of both are centered on the 
same young lives. The home is supremely concerned 
in what goes on in the school, and the school in the kind 
of influence that prevails in the home. An organized 
conference of parents is in a position to render signal 
service to a school by appraising its ideals, by keeping 
tally on the extent to which acknowledged standards are 
carried out, and by joining in the unceasing endeavor to 
advance the standards. Schools must be backed by the 
interest and appreciation of the community. Parents 
whose children are pupils of a school are for that particu- 
lar school the best representatives of the community. 

The school is to prepare its charges, not only for 
vocational life, but for citizenship. Teachers must be 
good citizens. They cannot give what they do not pos- 
sess. They must keep in living contact with the civic 
and social movements of the time. 

The first and second types are instrumental to the 
third. Now here, if anywhere, a new departure in edu- 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 295 

cational philosophy is called for. For when we discuss 
this third kind of reverence, the question of all questions 
is raised: To what end do we educate? What is to 
be the aim and outcome of all our effort? And our an- 
swer to this question will depend on our philosophy, and 
if our philosophy is ethical our answer must be dis- 
tinctively ethical. Froebel was a pantheist, and his pan- 
theism colored his conception of the educational end. 
Pestalozzi was an eighteenth century humanitarian. 
Many modern writers on education are biological evolu- 
tionists. Others even expressly disclaim any general 
outlook, and appear to be exclusively interested in per- 
fecting the technique of schoolmastering. Reverence of 
the third type is reverence for the undeveloped human 
being, — for the new generation, for our successors. 
What is it that we are to revere in a child? Its spiritual 
possibilities, its latent personality. To bring to birth its 
personality is the supreme educational end. We show 
our reverence for the child in the effort to personalize it. 
Let us consider in brief some of the practical conse- 
quences of this idea. 

To personalize the individual the first step is to dis- 
cover the empirical substratum in his nature. There is 
ever an empirical substratum subject to ethical trans- 
formations. The empirical substratum of personality is 
individuality I Individuality manifests itself in a lead- 
ing interest of some kind, a predominant bias which in- 
dicates the thing which the individual is fit to be and 
do. To discover the bent or bias is the first step, and 
the difficulties in the way of taking even this first step 
are admittedly great. Children and even adolescents 



296 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

often show no marked intellectual preferences whatever. 
Many adults too appear to be neutral so far as their 
mental life is concerned. Circumstances ran them per- 
haps into a certain mould — they might have been run 
into some other just as well. It is the task of the edu- 
cator to discover the predominant interest where it ex- 
ists, and to try to produce such an interest where it does 
not. What nature has not done in such cases art must 
attempt. 

When the leading interest is found it should next be 
made the means of creating interest in subjects to which 
the pupil is naturally indifferent or even averse. I have 
illustrated the process here implied in a paper on the 
pre-vocational art school which is connected with the 
Ethical Culture School. Young persons devoted to art 
are often unwilling to take up subjects which seem to 
them unrelated to what they really care for, like science 
and history. They are obsessed by a single passionate 
ambition. They are all eagerness to become artists — 
to draw, paint, model, etc. Time spent on any other 
subject seems to them misspent. If indulged in this one- 
sided activity, the chances are that they will not even be- 
come competent artists. In any case they will lack 
breadth and vision. They will lack a cultural back- 
ground. They will be inferior as human beings. They 
will not be personalized. For personality, on its mental 
as well as on its social side, depends on relatedness, — de- 
pends not so much on what one does, as on the interre- 
lation between what one does and what other people do. 

In order to expand the interest of the young art stu- 
dent, the method employed in the school just mentioned 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 297 

is to present those subjects which appear to be alien in 
such a way as to bring out the art aspects of them, the 
contact points between them and art. Thus in history 
special prominence is given to the age of Pericles, the 
age of Rembrandt. In science special attention is paid 
to the theory of color, the chemistry of etching. And all 
other branches of knowledge are treated similarly. The 
aim is not indeed to exploit the other subjects in the in- 
terest of art, but so to utilize the artistic interest as to 
lead the mind out to a larger comprehensive interest in 
other related branches on their own account. Or rather, 
to put my thought precisely, and thus to connect it with 
the imderlying ethical theory, the aim is to prepare the 
future artist for the give and take relation between his 
own pursuit and the activities of men in other vocations. 
He should be helped to enrich his own life as an artist by 
drawing upon all that the sciences and the humanities 
can give him, with a view to eventually returning with 
interest the profit he has derived. What the artist can 
do for the scientist, the religious teacher, etc., I have in- 
dicated in the previous chapter. 

Precisely the same cultural idea should be worked out 
in prevocational schools of commerce, of technology, of 
science, etc. In each case the paramount interest should 
be the starting-point, the center from which lines of 
interest are to be made to radiate out into the correlated 
branches. 

If this ethical idea is carried out the whole educational 
system will be remodeled. The cgesura in education will 
then fall about the sixteenth year. Before that the task 
will be to lay the general foundations and to recon- 



298 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

noiter the individuality of the pupil. After that there 
will be a system of prevocational schools. The college, 
a legacy which has come to us from a type of society 
unlike our own, will disappear, and the university will 
become an organism of vocational schools succeeding the 
prevocational. ^ 

I mentioned at the end of Book I the problem of 
specialization, the increased necessity of restricting one- 
self to a limited field in order to achieve anything like 
the consciousness of mastery, and the inevitable frac- 
tionalizing of men which is the consequence of this very 
tendency toward specialization. In the idea of outreach- 
ing radiations of interest and of the give and take re- 
lation there is the promise of liberation from the nar- 
rowness of specialism without the calamity of dilettant- 
ism. That this idea cannot be fully realized, that no 
one can actually extend his web of interest so far, that 
his reactions at best will be feeble, is perhaps a palmary 
instance of that law of frustration which fatally be- 
sets all human effort. But the effort will be in the right 
direction, and the effort counts. 

The University 

In sketching the ethical or spiritual side of the Uni- 
versity, initial stress is to be laid on the meaning of the 
word universitas. The term as at present used hardly 

^ Compare with the spiritual conception of culture here outlined 
Matthew Arnold's "knowing the best which has been thought and 
said"; and a recent definition of culture by an eminent American 
as "the knowing one thing well and a little of everything else/* 
without correlation of the little one knows of everything else with 
the one thing one is supposed to know extremely well. 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 299 

suggests more than all-inclusiveness. A modern uni- 
versity is an institution in which aU the different schools, 
the school of engineering, the school of science, the 
school of philosophy, etc., eivist side hy side, under a sin- 
gle governing body, and in which the various branches 
of knowledge are pursued without any visible systematic 
connection between them ! The spiritual ideal of a uni- 
versity is that of system, of organic connection, for this 
is what spiritual means. 

In looking back on the history of the higher institu- 
tions of learning one cannot but be struck by the close 
correspondence of those institutions to the general ideals 
of life of the people among whom they flourished. I 
call to mind the Hindu education with its Brahmanic 
background; the Mandarin education, with Confucian- 
ism as its inspiring principle; the musical education of 
the Greeks ; the theological education of Jews and Mo- 
hammedans ; then among the Western nations, the Eng- 
lish university a seminary for training rulers of the 
Empire; the German university, a training institution 
for the higher bureaucracy; the French university, visi- 
bly reflecting the logical tendency of the French mind. 

We in America, instructed by the survey of the past, 
are bound to face the question: In what way shall the 
American university diff*er from universities elsewhere? 
What characteristic shape shall the American university 
take on? How can the American university correspond 
to the American ideal of life? At present our notions 
in this respect are in a formative, not to say in a chaotic, 
condition. The college still survives — an institution de- 
signed for the education of gentlemen. Practical ten- 



300 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

dencies, looking toward materialistic success, prevail in 
many of our Western universities. The German re- 
search idea has come in as a third factor, penetrating 
deeply in some of our institutions, less deeply in others, 
but inharmonious everywhere with the rival conceptions 
that still persist. 

The principal circumstance that retards our university 
development doubtless is that the ideal of American life 
itself, which the university is to express and to promote, 
is as yet undefined in the minds of the American people. 
But without presuming to anticipate what must be the 
outcome of gradual and prolonged growth, it may still 
be serviceable to clear our minds as to the goal towards 
which we desire that the development shall tend. The 
fundamental ideal of the American people is that of 
freedom! The notion of freedom is crude as yet, but 
is capable of being ennobled and refined. To be free 
is to express power. To be free in the highest sense is 
to express the highest kind of power. The highest kind 
is that which is exercised in such wise as to elicit unlike 
yet cognate power in others. A people is to be called 
free when all the different social or vocational groups of 
which it is the integrated whole spontaneously react upon 
one another, and when in each group each member of it 
realizes some mental gift of his own. A free people is 
not one which is merely released from the authority of 
autocrats. That is only a condition of freedom, not free- 
dom itself. A free people is not one in which strong in- 
dividuals are permitted to thrive parasitically at the ex- 
pense of the weak. Nor yet one in which merely equal 
opportunity is afforded to all in the race for material 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 301 

well-being. A free people is one in which the essential 
energies of all effectuate themselves unhindered, the life 
of each swelling the surrounding tide of life, and being 
enriched in turn by the returning tide. This to my mind 
is liberty, — the liberation of what is best in each. This 
is freedom, — the free flow of life into life. The ideal 
American University is one which expresses and pro- 
motes this ideal of freedom. 

A university is a group of vocational schools. A truly 
democratic university is an organic system of vocational 
schools, one which in the relations that subsist between 
its schools affords a shining, stimulating example of the 
kind of relations that ought to subsist between the voca- 
tional groups in the state. 

The aim of an American university should be to fur- 
nish leaders for all the various groups who will under- 
take the great business of truly organizing democracy. 

Education for Admits 

Education should be continuous through life. The 
University Extension movement is endeavoring to meet 
this demand. It has already to its credit a considerable 
extension of knowledge, as well as the stirring up of 
interest in things of the mind among those whom it 
reaches. But far greater tasks than it has yet attacked 
remain. The academic method is not suited to the in- 
struction of adults. A method will have to be worked 
out for teaching a subject to mature minds different 
from that which is appropriate in introducing the sub- 
ject to the relatively immature minds of students. The 
student who has not yet entered vocational life needs to 



302 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

be put in possession of the principles by which he can lay 
hold of life. A mature person who is deficient in theo- 
retical education needs to be helped to interpret his voca- 
tional experience in such a manner as to find his way 
back to the principles. In the one case there is the out- 
look and the emptiness; in the other case the fullness of 
content without the comprehensive outlook. 

Secondly, the stages of vocational development 
through which the worker has already passed in his vo- 
cation are to be borne in mind, and the teaching adapted 
to the different stages. I have suggested four divisions : 
that of apprenticeship, that of initial mastery, that of 
more complete mastery, and the emeritus stage.^ 

Thirdly, it is getting to be increasingly difficult for 
a specialist in any one branch to keep abreast of the 
progress made in other branches. Popularization of the 
ordinary kind does not satisfy. It means, as a rule, dilu- 
ting the subject-matter, not truly simplifying it. Pro- 
vision should be made, in any large and generous scheme 
of public education, for enabling ripe minds to assimi- 
late the ripest fruits produced by contemporary thinkers 
and writers who work in other fields. 

NOTE 

A few outstanding points in regard to what is called Moral 
Education may be added to this chapter. 

There should be ethical teaching in the universities. The 
kinds of ethics taught should be adapted to the university 
period of life, emphasis being put on the experiences of the 

2 See the chapter on "Ethical Development Extending Through 
Life" in The World Crisis, 



EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS 303 

student at that time of life, — on friendship, the sex relation, 
the vocational outlook, etc. 

The ethical problems arising in the different vocations should 
be included in the programme for the education of adults. 

s 

Systematic moral education in schools and high schools is ad- 
visable. It is frequently criticised on the ground that it is apt 
to be schematic and unreal. Moral counsels given as the occa- 
sion arises are believed to be more effective. They hit the nail 
on the head and drive it home. The reply to this is that inci- 
dental moral advice and exhortation is not excluded, but that it 
by no means adequately answers the purpose. The occasions for 
giving the necessary guidance simply do not arise. This kind 
of moral teaching is apt to be patchy. In the next place, ethi- 
cal instruction, when rightly planned, has two objects: the one 
to bring into clear relief the life axioms that underlie the entire 
home and school experience of the pupil, and secondly, to give 
to the pupil a provisional chart and compass or ethical out- 
look upon his future life. Ethical teaching conceived of and 
conducted in this manner is neither schematic nor artificial. 
It does not drive home a nail here and there, it constructs a 
mental house in which the mind of the pupil can be at home, — 
with windows in it, looking out upon a large landscape out- 
side. 

The capital significance of right relations, ethical relations, 
between the members of the teaching staff has been noted in 
the text. In every school clubs should be formed consisting of 
pupils specially interested in any one subject and of the 
special teachers of that subject: — or if not formal clubs, then 
at least more intimate personal relations should exist between 
the special teacher and those selected pupils, the object being 
through personal intercourse to introduce the young aspirant 
to a knowledge of the problems on which the older person is 
intent. There is nothing nearly so educative for the young 
as to be taken into the counsels of their elders. 



304 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The more gifted pupils of the school should be invited to take 
a personal interest in helping the more backward students. In 
every school, high school and university there are social mis- 
fits, — shy, sensitive, solitary youths who fail to come into easy 
touch with their fellows, and suffer acutely. They are objects 
of the most delicate, deferential charity, and the task of bring- 
ing them into fellowship offers one of the finest opportunities 
for ethical education. 

A vital system of self-government is to be used as a means of 
placing real responsibility upon the students under due advice. 
To exercise responsibility is to acquire character. Self-govern- 
ment is particularly important so far as it relates to the 
administration of justice in a school. Cases of discipline 
should be used as means to create the right conception of pun- 
ishment, the right attitude towards those who have erred. 

The relation between the adolescent boy and girl and the 
parents is of prime significance as illustrating in a way that 
young persons can understand the general conception of the 
ethical relation as reciprocal. The youth should be shown that 
he can be not only the recipient but a giver of benefits, that he 
can be a real help to his parents, chiefly by sympathetically 
entering into the problems and difiiculties with which they have 
to contend. The parents, instead of being regarded by the 
young as an earthly providence, existing only for the purpose 
of bestowing benefits, should be seen in their true light as 
struggling, and often heavily burdened human beings. At the 
same time the young son or daughter will in this way gain an 
invaluable preparation for comprehending the difficulties under 
which the effort to live must be carried on. 

In regard to patriotism, it is important that the errors and 
mistakes committed by one's nation in the past should not be 
overlooked or minimized. 

The school should furnish to the students various outlets 
for social service such as they in their period of life are capable 
of rendering. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE STATE 

The leading theories of the state should be kept in 
view for comparison with the ethical theory here set 
forth— the theories of Aristotle and Plato, St. Augus- 
tine and the mediaeval schoolmen, Rousseau's contract 
theory, and the German conceptions of the state pro- 
pounded by Kant, Fichte, Hegel. Moreover, since the 
ideas actually embodied in governments, in the Persian 
monarchy, for instance, in the Greek City State, Venice, 
etc., are not identical with the constructions of the 
philosophers, the leading facts of the history of politics 
should be borne in mind as well as the leading theories. 

The state has two aspects: (1) It is the balance 
wheel of the vocational groups included within it. (2) 
It is the political expression of the national character, 
and its ethical purpose is to develop this empirical na- 
tional character into a spiritual character. I shall speak 
of the first aspect in this chapter. 

1. The state exists in order to furnish increasingly 
from age to age the conditions under which the reac- 
tions between the groups described above can take place 
effectually. In concentrating attention upon the voca- 
tional groups as the entities to be harmonized with one 
another, account is taken by implication of the family 
and of the individual. The sub-organisms are embraced 

305 



306 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

within the superior organisms. A more general state- 
ment would be that the state supplies the external con- 
ditions required for development towards ethical per- 
sonality by those who pass through the institutions of 
the family, of the vocation, etc. 

The state possesses a spiritual character in so far as 
it supplies these conditions, and in as much as it has a 
spiritual character it is not merely justified but ethically 
required to use force. Force is spiritualized when em- 
ployed to establish the conditions indispensable to spirit- 
ual life. The conditions enforced must be such as in 
the opinion of the preponderant number of citizens in- 
disputably make for the development of personality. 
Examples of such conditions are protection of life, 
property, reputation, compulsory education, the main- 
tenance of the monogamic family, protection against 
foreign invasion, etc. All the functions of the state 
commonly enumerated follow from the ethical principle. 
But over and above the recognized ones, new and nobler 
functions of the state will appear. 

The redeeming thought with respect to the use of 
force by the state consists in regarding force as ethical 
discipline, and in making the extent to which it is favor- 
able to spiritual freedom the measure and test of its 
rightful use.^ When men are compelled to spend the 
major part of their time in the protection of bare life, 
as was the case, for instance, in the early days of feud- 
alism, they are to that extent unfree. Freedom con- 
sists in energizing the highest and most distinctive hu- 
man faculties. 

^ Vide Appendix II, on Force and Freedom, 



THE STATE 307 

The development of the state should proceed in two 
directions. It should withdraw from many functions ex- 
ercised by it in the past, notably from such as properly 
belong to the sub-organisms. At the same time, it 
should lay its coercive hands upon new matters, im- 
posing new limitations on capricious freedom in the 
interest of spiritual freedom, as soon as the pertinency 
of such limitations to the ethical end becomes clear. 
For instance, the state may, and doubtless will, inter- 
fere with marriage to a far greater extent than it has 
yet done. It will forbid the marriage of the unsound. 
If a study of character-types should ever become ad- 
vanced enough — a hazardous conjecture — to make it 
predictable that the union of certain character-types will 
lead to infelicitous marriage, the state will be justified 
in prohibiting such unions. 

Law, ideally defined, is the sum total of conditions, 
capable of being enforced, which are necessary or favor- 
able to the development of personality. The purpose of 
law is two-fold: to maintain the more developed mem- 
bers of society at the level they have reached, and, by 
educative penalties, to bring the backward up to the 
same level. In the article on "Force and Freedom" 
referred to above, law is compared to such bodily actions 
as walking, which at first are superintended by con- 
sciousness, and then become automatic, thereby setting 
consciousness free to attend to new and more important 
business. Similarly, law is designed to render the con- 
ditions favorable to personality so explicit that their 
observance shall become automatic, and that mankind 
shall be at liberty to discover new and more significant 



308 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

conditions which in their turn are again to become auto- 
matic. 

Because of the lack of the ethical point of view, the 
exercise of force by the state has seemed purely ar- 
bitrary, and has given rise to a perverted and disastrous 
conception of sovereignty. The sovereignty of the state 
has two aspects: the one internal, the other external. 
Sovereignty means supremacy. The state is sovereign, 
within limits, however, with respect to its citizens. The 
state is also sovereign, within limits, however, with re- 
spect to other outside states. 

With respect to the internal aspect of sovereignty 
some writers hold that citizens have no rights as against 
the state — only rights accorded by the state. But this 
from the ethical point of view is a wholly untenable 
position. There are rights of the individual, rights of 
the family, rights of the vocational group, which the 
state does not create but is bound to acknowledge and 
which its power cannot properly infringe. As against 
the state the individual has, for instance, the right which 
is commonly designated as "the freedom of conscience." 
The family has rights against the state; the law cannot 
interfere with the intimacies of the marriage and par- 
ental relations. The vocational group likewise is only 
partially subject to public reglementation. I have de- 
fined law as the sum total of the conditions. The state 
can prescribe the conditions, but cannot trace the ways of 
freedom within the conditions. The state prescribes the 
enforceable conditions; it has no concern with unenforce- 
able inner processes. 



THE STATE 309 

It thus appears that sovereignty or supremacy is an 
attribute not peculiar to the state, although it looms up 
larger and more impressive when exercised by the state. 
Supremacy belongs to the individual in his private 
sphere, to the family in its proper province, to the vo- 
cation, etc. Sovereignty or supremacy belongs to each 
of the social institutions within its precincts, in so far 
as the supremacy within that precinct is requisite for 
the accomplishment of the ethical end to be therein at- 
tained. But sovereignty is not absolute in any sphere; 
neither in that of the individual, nor of the family, nor 
yet of the state. The absolute conception of sovereignty 
is the result of the lack of an ethical conception of the 
social institutions. The state is sovereign only so far 
as the exercise of its supremacy is necessary to the 
spiritual end of citizenship. On this account and for 
this purpose it may rightfully constrain the sub -organ- 
isms within it, and may also pronounce its noli me 
tangere as against the larger group of states encompass- 
ing it. But so far as the spiritual ends to be achieved 
in the international relations are concerned, the state 
with respect to these is subject to international sov- 
ereignty, — a new conception which mankind is striv- 
ing to bring to the birth today. The false notion of 
state sovereignty as arbitrary and absolute, is admit- 
tedly today a chief stumbling-block in the way of 
the formation of an international organization of 
peoples. 



310 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The System of Representation Which Is Required to 
Give Expression to the Organic Idea of the State. 

The ethical aim of political reformation and recon- 
struction may be put in a single word^ Organization. 
The state and especially the democratic state must he or- 
ganized,'^ This means practically that the basis of repre- 
sentation shall be the vocational group, that vocational 
representation shall replace representation by geo- 
graphical districts.^ The law-making body on this basis 

^ I use the word Organize in its spiritual sense. The empirical, 
animal organism is commonly taken as the type upon which the 
notion of organism is modeled. The animal organism, however, 
fails to express the implicit idea, for the following reasons; The 
number of members is limited; the combination of organs is, so far 
as we can know, accidental, and the relation is hierarchical, — there 
»re inferior and superior organs. The spiritual conception differs 
in each of these points. The number of members is infinite; the 
relation is necessary; and they are equal, that is, of equal worth. 
To distinguish the spiritual pattern from the animal type the term 
metorganic may be used for the former, in analogy to such terms 
as metempirical, metaphysical, etc., and the system of ethics expound- 
ed in this volume may be called the metorganic system of ethics, 

^ Representation by geographical districts is the logical outcome 
of the individualistic conception of democracy. Where this pre- 
t^ails, the state is supposed to take account only of the common inter- 
ests, those in respect to which all individuals are alike, such as se- 
curity of life and property, those interests being ignored in respect to 
which the groups that constitute society, the farmers, the merchants, 
the industrial laborers, etc., differ. Hence any convenient number 
of citizens, pursuing their life purposes side by side within a certain 
geographical area, may serve as a constituency. The absence of 
regard for the real diversity, and often the clash of interests, be- 
tween persons belonging to such constituencies, is due to the atomis- 
tic, individualistic notion of democracy just mentioned. But sheer 
individualism is everywhere on the wane, and is bound to become less 
and less dominant in the degree that the industrial evolution of so- 
ciety proceeds, and the various groups stand out distinctly as different 



THE STATE 311 

will consist of representatives or delegates of the agri- 
cultural, the commercial, the industrial, the scientific 
group, etc. Women belonging to these groups will ex- 
ercise the franchise within them. There will also be a 
distinct group of home-makers; motherhood will be 
recognized as a vocation. 

Attention may be called to certain practical advan- 
tages of the proposed rearrangement of the representa- 
tive system. It will tend to bring forward in political 
life the best citizens, instead of the mediocre or the base. 
This is likely to come about because there is no distinc- 
tion that men more ardently covet than that of being 
considered primus inter pares; as, for instance, the first 
or one of the first of the city's merchants, or one of the 
most eminent scientists, or an artist whom his fellow-ar- 
tists select as the fittest to represent them in the ^reat 
council of city, state, or nation. And if only this much 
can be gained by the new representative system, that 
the law-making body shall consist of the most experi- 
enced, the most enlightened, the wisest, the actual lead- 
ers in the various walks of life, in brief, that the elected 
shall be the elect, certainly one of the principal evils 
with which individualistic democracy is afilicted will 
tend to be removed. 

But other advantages will accrue. This, in particu- 
lar, that the constituencies, instead of merely delegat- 
ing their powers, will share in the business of law-mak- 

against one another in their functions and in the conditions subservi- 
ent to those functions. Society is in fact not an aggregate of human 
atoms. It is already an imperfect organism, destined to become more 
and more adequately organized. And the system of representation 
has got to be remodeled and adjusted to this fact and this ideal. 



312 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ing, will be in vital touch with their leaders or represen- 
tatives, while the latter conversely will politically educate 
the constituencies. The mode of procedure under the sys- 
tem here sketched will be somewhat as follows : 

Take, as an illustration, the group of industrial labor- 
ers. They wiU first meet in a primary assembly, and 
discuss measures deemed by them important in the in- 
terests of their group. The leader who represents them 
in the legislature will take part in the initial discussions, 
and exercise no doubt a strong influence in bringing 
matter finally to a head. He will then carry into the law- 
making body, — which consists of representatives of the 
various social groups, — ^the sifted-out demands of the 
laborers, the measures which they desire to have enacted 
into law. He will bring forward these measures in the 
legislature. But there objections are likely to be raised. 
The representatives of the other groups will discover 
what the laborers naturally failed to note, that the pro- 
posed law or laws, if enacted, will have certain injurious 
effects on the interests of the other groups. The sif ting- 
out process, therefore, will now begin anew and be car- 
ried on on a higher level in the legislature. The repre- 
sentatives of all the various groups will separate the 
wheat from the chaff in what is proposed by any one 
group. The next stop will be that the representative of 
the laborers, returning to his constituency, will communi- 
cate to them the difficulties that were raised, the decisions 
reached, and will thus impart to them the wider vision 
which he himself gained in the discussions of the law- 
making body. In this way he will be the instructor, the 
political teacher of his constituents. And the principle 



THE STATE 313 

by which the value of any new measure will finally be 
judged will be simply this: that the supposed interests 
of one group cannot be its true interests unless they are 
found to promote the interests of all the other vocational 
groups.^ 

The law-making body should be a council of the 
groups. It should not be a "Parliament," or "talking 
body," but a sifting body. Xor yet a body of manda- 
tories commissioned to merely give effect to a public 
opinion or a public sentiment already existing. In fact, 
public opinion or public sentiment in the raw is apt to 
be a poor index of what is really for the public good. 
Public opinion is apt to be unripe, haphazard, impul- 
sive rather than reflective. Besides, it is often contam- 
inated at its very source, the facts on which the public de- 
pend for their opinions being deliberately falsified or 
placed in false perspective ; while the opinions furnished 
in newspaper editorials are almost inevitably biased. 
Only on great occasions, when simple moral issues are 
presented, can the common sense and moral sense of the 
people be wholly depended on. But such occasions are 
episodical ; and the orderly business of government can- 
not be carried on by spurts. Government by public 
opinion may be and in some respects is better indeed than 
class government; in other important respects it is 
worse. A class at the head of the state at least as a rule 
knows what it wants, and proceeds methodically to carry 
out its purposes. Public opinion, on the other hand, like 
all opinion, is unsure, unsafe, as Plato has long since 

* By "interests" I understand fulfilment of the social function 
with which the group is charged. 



314 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

made dialectically clear. And public sentiment, like all 
sentiment, is fluctuating. To build the state on public 
opinion and public sentiment, as many of our writers on 
politics would have us do, is after all a good deal like 
building a house on sand.^ 

Instead of "public opinion" and "public sentiment" 
let us say public reason and public will! — reason and 
will to discover in conjunction what the public good 
really is. For what it really is no one as yet knows. 
The "public good" is a problem to be approximately 
solved. The public good will be consummated when the 
conditions are furnished necessary and favorable to the 
development of personality in each of the constituent 
groups of the social body. To study these conditions is 
the office of the law-making body, and therefore that 
body must be so constituted as to include these groups in 
their capacity as groups. 

Another advantage to be expected from vocational 
representation is that the different interests of society, 
— I stress the fact that they are diiFerent, and often 
temporarily conflicting, — will be compelled under this 
plan to come out into the open. An industry, for 
instance, may require the assistance of a protective 
tariff*, in its infant stages, and the agricultural group 
may rightly be asked to make the necessary sacrifices. 

^ And, as a matter of fact, because this is so, there is no state, no 
democracy, in which public opinion or public sentiment actually does 
rule, save by fits and starts. Government is usually in the hands of 
more or less selfish coteries, who operate behind the scenes, who do 
know what they want and who, like the Piper of Hamelin, are past 
masters of the art of leading the political children whither they will. 



THE STATE 315 

In the long run there will be compensation. The agri- 
culturists will eventually benefit by the diversification 
of the national life. But "in the long run" means that 
the next generation will benefit, not the present agricul- 
turists, a distinction sometimes somewhat cavalierly ig- 
nored. The present generation will be called upon to 
make a sacrifice, precisely as in the family some of the 
members may have to sacrifice a part of their income to 
provide for a weaker member. But the circumstance 
that the sacrifice is recognized as a sacrifice will serve 
to put an end to the protection when the special need for 
it has ceased. Under the present system, on the other 
hand, the state is supposed to have no concern with the 
special interests of any group. All the same, there are 
the special interests, and in consequence that which is 
for the interest of one group has to be advocated as if it 
were for the general interest of the entire community* 
And since general interest is easily mistaken for perpet- 
ual interest, the protection is apt to be continued long 
after its particular usefulness has ceased.® 

® I am not of course discussing the merits or demerits of the pro- 
tective tariff as such, but am using it as illustration. As such it 
will serve the purpose. 

The practice of "log-rolling" may at first sight seem to resemble 
the proposed plan. But, in reality, the two are diametrical oppo- 
sites. By "log-rolling" is meant the kind of concessions made by 
the shipping interests to the manufacturers by the manufacturers to 
the farmers, or to the workingmen when the latter happen to be 
strong enough to enforce their demands. Each group persists in 
pursuing its selfish aims; only, in order to achieve them it makes 
concessions to the selfishness of the others. Each follows the path 
into the Hades of egotism, and throws the necessary sops to Cer- 
berus on the way. The plan outlined in the text, on the other hand^ 



316 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

I am earnestly concerned that vocational representa- 
tion shall not be regarded as a mere device in the mech- 
anism of politics, like the substitution of the long for 
the short ballot, or the initiative and referendum. In- 
novations of the latter kind leave the prevalent concep- 
tion of democracy untouched, they are merely intended 
to improve the machinery by which that conception is 
to be worked out in practice; they are mechanical con- 
trivances, not fundamental reconstructions. Voca- 
tional representation, in my view of it, is the appropri- 
ate expression of the organic idea of the state. The 
state is the soul. The soul must have a body. Voca- 
tional representation is that body. 

Two remarks may here be added. One relates to a 
question which has given rise to considerable discus- 
sion, namely, the question where the state resides? In 
a monarchy it seems to reside visibly in the person of 
the king. Louis XIV is said to have declared "I am 
the state." But where does it reside in a democracy? 
The chief executive, the law-making body, and even 
the constituencies, are organs of the state. But where 
does the state itself have its habitation? The state has 
no separate domicile. So far as it truly exists at all 
it exists in the minds of the individuals who truly con- 
ceive of it. The object of political life is to educate 
the citizen so that he may more and more truly con- 
has for its object the interlocking of the various social interests, the 
fitting them reciprocally into one another ; or better, the obj ect is to 
cure each group as far as possible of its selfishness by so modifying 
its claims, that the granting of them shall become beneficial to the 
rest. 



THE STATE 317 

ceive of the state, so that he may give birth to the state 
idea within himself. To do this is to pass through one 
of the necessary phases on the road to personality. In 
the family the individual is in reactive relations with 
a few, in the vocation with a larger number. In the 
state or nation he may be one of a hundred millions or 
more. Yet it is not the numerical extension as such 
that constitutes the enlargement. It is rather the di- 
versity of the points of contact, and the complexity of 
the relations by which the spiritual ideal is more fully il- 
lustrated in the finite world in proportion as the circle 
widens. To engender the idea of the state in oneself is 
to place oneself ideally into reactive relations with the 
diverse groups embraced within one's nation. And to 
do this is a spiritual achievement of no mean order. I 
should prefer to use the word "stateship" instead of cit- 
izenship. Stateship is attained by one who brings to 
birth within himself the idea of the state, and in whom 
that idea becomes a controlling ethical force. 

A second remark concerns the perplexed subject of 
the conflict of duties. The nearer duties are sometimes 
preferred to the more remote, and at other times we 
are asked to sacrifice everything to the larger whole. 
We owe our first devotion, it is said, to the members of 
our family; but then again we must be willing to sac- 
rifice life itself and the welfare of our family to our 
country when it calls upon us in its need. Largeness 
alone certainly does not serve as an ethical ground for 
preference. The quantitative standard implied in such 
phrases as "the greatest good of the greatest number" 
is out of place when we deal with ethical relations, which 



318 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in their very nature are qualitative. Now the account of 
the social institutions given in previous chapters as suc- 
cessive stations on the road to the spiritual goal may 
throw some light on this difficult subject. Normally, the 
claims of the anterior stations are to be preferred — the 
claims of the family for instance to those of the vocation, 
because the family is the matrix of the three-fold rever- 
ence, and the individual must pass under the ethical in- 
fluence of family life before he is fit to use vocational life 
ethically to good purpose. The anterior groups are not 
merely smaller, they are germinal. The training re- 
ceived in them is the condition on which spiritual prog- 
ress depends later on. On the other hand, the later 
groups are the more complete and more explicated ex- 
pressions of the spiritual ideal; hence if the very exist- 
ence of one of the later groups is threatened, or is in dan- 
ger of being denatured of its spiritual use, then the later 
group is to be preferred to the earlier, the terminus ad 
quern, precisely because it is the terminus ad quem, to the 
terminus a quo. 

To give a familiar illustration. In our time, which is 
a tune of transition and doubt, many a religious teacher 
finds himself in sore straits to decide between the claims 
of the vocation and the family. As a religious teacher 
he is pledged to teach only what in his heart of hearts 
he believes to be true; he is especially under obligation 
to use words in such a way as to convey to others the 
same meaning that he attaches to them himself. But 
this may mean exposing his family to serious priva- 
tions. The situation is full of perplexity and pain, but 
the line of choice is plain enough. The claims of his 



THE STATE 319 

high vocation must in this case take precedence. In 
like manner, when the existence or the integrity of the 
state is at issue, the claims of the state as the terminus 
ad quern override those of the vocation, the family, and 
the state, and may even demand the sacrifice of the phys- 
ical existence of the individual himself. 

NOTES 

1. The idea of democracy is often neatly put — all too* 
neatly, into the following formula : In antiquity the individual 
existed for the sake of the state, in modern democracy the state 
exists for the sake of the individual. Both of these statements 
as they stand are mischievous and misleading and require to be 
qualified. It is not true that in antiquity the individual existed 
for the sake of the state in the sense that his separate existence 
was extinguished. The citizen class in Aristotle's state, the 
rulers in Plato's state, and even a member of one of the inferior 
classes, each in his own way fulfilled a distinct function. He 
was not suppressed in the state, he expressed his function by 
the action appropriate to his station. The philosophic rulers 
might do the thinking and governing. They were the head of 
the body politic — others the hands and feet. The underlying 
conception was what may be called spuriously organic, bor- 
rowed more or less from the animal type of organism. 

The second limb of the formula is no less superficial. In no 
modern nation does the state exist, or at bottom is it supposed 
to exist, for the benefit of the individuals who at any tilne com- 
pose it. If this were the ruling conception, how could the 
democratic state require its citizens to give up their lives in its 
defense? If the state existed for the benefit of the individuals, 
the state would be the means, and the so-called good of the in- 
dividual the end. And in that case it would surely be irrational 
to sacrifice the end for the sake of the means, in other words to 



320 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

put an end to one's life in defense of the state, a mere instru- 
ment for the protection and prosperity of one's own life. 

To reply that the state exists for the sake not of one indi- 
vidual but of all (observe however that the formula says "the 
individual," and is ambiguous and slippery at this point), nor 
even only for the sake of all the individuals now living, but also 
for the sake of the millions yet unborn — to say this is once 
more to introduce an ideal entity which it was the very object 
of the formula as quoted to banish. The formula was intended 
to give us, in place of "the metaphysical entities" of the Greeks 
and the Germans, a very palpable thing — the good of the in- 
dividual. The good of the individual seemed to be a palpable 
thing, though in truth it is the most impalpable thing in the 
world. And by defining the state in this wise we were supposed 
to come onto solid ground. But now, behold, it is the good of 
unborn millions which is to be the object of our devotion, and 
who can imagine what this good of unborn millions is likely 
to be? 

The fact is that without ideal entities the conception of the 
state in any noble shape cannot be construed at all. The 
organic conception must now take the place of the individual- 
istic. The organic conception indeed as it was worked out in 
antiquity, or as it lived on in the theories of mediaeval writers, 
or as it survives in the works of certain German publicists, who 
use it to defend the feudalistic structure of society, has rightly 
fallen into discredit, — not because it is organic, but because it is 
pseudo-organic, that is, based on the type of the animal organ- 
ism. The individualistic conception of the state at present 
current in America and in all modern democracies, is a violent 
reaction against this false idea of organization. The inesti- 
mable germ of truth individualism contains is that no such dis- 
tinction can be allowed as between head and hands or feet in 
political life, that all the multitudes of "hands" who work in 
the factories, for instance, must be respected as personalities 
having not only hands but also heads and hearts. But indi- 
vidualism, though it affirms this idea, belies it in practice, as 



THE STATE 321 

the actual state of society in America and elsewhere abundantly 
proves. And it is bound to do so, because personality implies 
more than material well-being, either for a single individual or 
for all individuals now living or for all future individuals. 
Personality implies truly organic relations to other fellow- 
beings — and this can only be achieved by organizing the society 
in which men live. 

The way taken has been, by reaction from pseudo-organiza- 
tion, to extreme individualism and concomitant materialism. 
The way out lies in the direction of genuine organization. 

S. Certain evils observable in the workings of American 
democracy may be traced to the following causes : 

(a) The people as a whole are still in the pioneer stage. A 
country enormously rich in material resources stimulates 
wealth-production. A host of immigrants escaped from poverty 
abroad are stung into wealth-getting here. The frontier line 
is now far to the West, but the influence of the pioneer move- 
ment still in progress flows back upon the Eastern states. 

(b) More important still are the evils due to the crude 
individualistic idea of democracy just characterized. If the 
state exists for the good of the individual, and if the good of 
the individual is conceived to be the acquisition of wealth, then 
private business will take precedence of the public business. 
Yet under the democratic system of frequent elections the 
public business demands constant attention. In consequence, a 
special class of professional politicians arises, comprising a 
minority of disinterestedly patriotic men, and a majority of 
persons whose private business is not sufficiently remunerative 
to divert them from the public service. The appearance of the 
political dictator called "boss" is the inevitable outcome of these 
conditions. This army of professional politicians, and in par- 
ticular the vulgar figure at their hand, is the chief disgrace of 
the American democracy, and has been the target of incessant 
invective by American writers. But it is idle to stigmatize the 
eff^ect and overlook the cause, to squander invective upon the 



322 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

symptom and at the same time to leave the malady untouched. 
,The malady itself is the individualistic conception of democ- 
racy, and until this is replaced by a better one, the evil in 
question may be modified in form but will certainly not dis- 
appear. 

A way must be found for the citizen to attend to his private 
business, which is coming to be more and more exacting, and 
to the public business at the same time. The system of voca- 
tional representation offers an opportunity in this direction. 
Citizens will be voting in their vocational groups for measures 
intended to advance their vocational interests, but will be 
taught to advance them in such a way that the related inter- 
ests of other groups, or the public interest, shall be thereby 
promoted. 

S, Proportional representation, which is at present being 
tested abroad, and earnestly considered in France, England 
and Germany, may be a bridge leading over from the present 
plan of geographical to that of vocational representation. The 
proportional system itself, it is true, is still based on the 
individualistic idea. It is a movement on behalf of submerged 
minorities. It quarrels with the present arrangement for the 
reason that the will of the greater number of individuals, but 
not of all individuals, is brought to bear on public decisions. 
But if adopted it may well offer, without violent change, a way 
for the collective representation of vocational groups. 

4 Citizenship should be graded. A youth of twenty-one is 
scarcely prepared to exercise the duties of the citizen intelli- 
gently. As long as the view prevails that the functions of the 
state are to be restricted to a minimum, it is perhaps not wholly 
absurd to admit a mere stripling to a share in the conduct of 
government. But the sphere of government is steadily enlarg- 
ing, and its problems are becoming more and more intricate. 
Twenty-five would certainly be a better minimum age. Under 
vocational representation there is likely to be an Upper House 
consisting of members who have served in the Lower House. 



THE STATE 323 

Citizens who have attained the age of twenty-five might be 
empowered to vote for members of the Lower House, those who 
have attained the age of thirty-five for members of the Upper 
House, but these are details upon which it is unfitting to ex- 
patiate here. The point I have in mind is that citizenship 
should be graded. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NATIONAL CHARACTER SPIRITUALLY TRANS- 
FORMED: THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY, OR 
THE ORGANIZATION OP MANKIND 

There is such a thing as a national character.^ The 
national character is reflected in the language, litera- 
ture, laws and customs, arts, institutions and religion 
of a people. Even when the religion professed by dif- 
ferent peoples is the same in name it is strongly tinc- 
tured in the different countries by the national differ- 
ences. Compare for example the Christianity of Prus- 
sia with that of France, or that of England with that 
of Russia. 

The national character, like that of the individual, has 
its plus and minus qualities, its excellent and its re- 
pellent traits. ' 

The national character is to be spiritualized by raising 
the plus traits to the Nth degree. 

To this end, as before, the threefold reverence and es- 
pecially the third reverence is the means. The backward 
peoples of the earth are the paramount object of rever- 
ence. The more advanced peoples are to bring to light 

^ See Fouillee's Esquisse psychologique des Peuples europeens, 
also the Chapter on German^ English and American Ideals in The 
World Crisis, 

324 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 325 

the spiritual life latent in the backward. In order to do 
so, they are to carry out the principle of reverence to- 
ward past civilization, to sift out what is vital in the 
work of previous generations. And further, they are to 
conform to the second principle of reverence, that to- 
ward contemporaries approximately on the same level, 
i,e.^ toward the other civilized nations. No single nation 
is really competent to undertake the great task of awak- 
ing the stationary peoples of India and China, of edu- 
cating the primitive peoples of Africa. A union of the 
civilized nations should be formed in order that together 
they may jointly accomplish the pedagogy of the less 
developed. The educational point of view once again 
appears as the ethical. The relation of the less devel- 
oped to the more advanced peoples should be analogous 
to that of the child towards the parents. Just as neither 
the father singly nor the mother alone can release spirit- 
ual life in the offspring, so the different civilized na- 
tions, each of which has its own gift, its own plus traits, 
are to interact for the purpose of jointly awakening the 
creative energies within the slumbering souls of the un- 
developed peoples. 

It follows that a nation cannot even be defined ethi- 
cally except as a member of an international society, 
and we begin to see the help afforded by the spiritual 
conception in solving at least ideally the problem of 
right international relations. Whereas hitherto the no- 
tion of the sovereignty of each nation has been a formi- 
dable impediment to the formation of an overarching 
world society, the ethical conception not only permits 
this expansion of sovereignty, but necessitates it. A 



326 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

nation, ethically defined, is a unique member of the 
corpus internationale of mankind. As unique it main- 
tains of right its relative independence, as a member it 
is bound by intrinsic ties to its fellow-members, and is 
subject to the greater sovereignty including them all 
alike.^ A nation indeed cannot even maintain its inde- 
pendence against other nations except by sheer might 
if it acknowledges none but capricious ties between itself 
and them, such as treaties, or Hague Conference agree- 
ments which can be dissolved at pleasure. There must 
be recognized an inner ethical tie between nation and 
nation, and it must receive legal formulation. This ethi- 
cal tie is the true vinculum societatis humance and sup- 
plies what has hitherto been absolutely lacking, — an ethi- 
cal basis for international law. 

The ethical relation between nations is founded on 
the fact that each nation represents a significant type of 
humanity, that each nation has certain plus and minus 
qualities, that it is dependent on other nations to supple- 
ment its defects; and more than this, that it can ex- 
purgate, as it ought, its minus qualities only by striving 
to evoke the spiritual life in other peoples. 

One salient point I must emphasize. The national 
character with its plus and minus traits is empirical, and 

^ Each term in the series of social institutions is ethically defined 
by referring to the succeeding terms. The family prepares for the 
vocation, the vocation for the state or nation, the nation for the 
international society, and all the successive terms receive their ulti- 
mate definition from the infinite spiritual universe which includes 
them, and broods over them and dwells in each, so that the expand- 
ing ethical experience gained at the successive stations is spiritually 
the ratio cognoscendi, not the ratio essendi. 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 327 

the development of the empirical character is not itself 
the highest aim of the state. The spiritual transforma- 
tion of this empirical character, as I must take pains to 
repeat, is the aim. 

And herein appears the difference between the point 
of view taken in this chapter and the political doctrine of 
the eminent Swiss publicist Bluntschli. He too recog- 
nizes the development of the national character as the 
aim of the state ; and in so far as he does this he is in ad- 
,vance of writers who limit the state's functions to the pro- 
tection of life and property, to defense against foreign 
aggression, promotion of prosperity, and of power and 
prestige. Bluntschli has the insight to perceive that a 
nation is a collective entity, having a certain defined 
character, and the development of the distinctive na- 
tional gifts is in his eyes the supreme purpose of national 
life, the political organization of the state being a means 
to this end. But he falls into a grave error by identify- 
ing the empirical with the spiritual character of the na- 
tion, and setting up the former as an end worthy on its 
own account. The empirical character of a collective 
entity is in this respect no more worthy of honor, and no 
more fit to be a ground of obligation, than the empirical 
character of the individual. And the conclusions at 
which Bluntschli arrives are a sufficient proof of the 
ethical inadequacy of his vision. Some nations, a very 
few he thinks, possess poHtical capacity, and they are to 
rule other peoples. Here we have the "White Man's 
Burden" — an obvious violation of the ethical principle of 
national independence. Further, the world state, which 
is to include all nations, is to concern itself only with their 



328 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

common interests. Bluntschli thus accepts the uniform- 
ity principle in ethics, excluding the idea of the reaction 
of differences which is of the very essence of the ethical 
relation ; while the ideal future as he sees it is that of na- 
tions coexisting peacefully side by side, competing 
peacefully with each other, and doubtless borrowing 
from one another the best fruits produced by each. But 
it is idle to expect peaceful coexistence so long as the 
strong exist by the side of the weak without there being 
acknowledged an intrinsic spiritual tie between them; 
and competition between peoples will result, like compe- 
tition between individuals, in strife and exploitation; 
while the mere borrowing by each of the fruits produced 
by the rest omits the vital point, upon which I lay the 
greatest stress, of the eliciting of the fruits in each by the 
spiritualizing influence of the rest. 

Surveying Bluntschli's doctrine as a whole, it is clear 
that his empirical conception of the state leaves it a 
purely secular institution concerned with externals, and 
not really related to the inner life, certainly not a station 
in the development of personality. He practically ac- 
knowledges as much when he says that the state is man 
writ large, and the church woman writ large; that the 
state represents the masculine principle, the church the 
feminine principle. For the feminine, according to him, 
is the spiritual principle. The state deals with exter- 
nals ; to the church is reserved the prerogative of enter- 
ing into and transforming the inner life.^ 

^ It is true that the state is concerned with those conditions of the 
spiritual reactions that are capable of being enforced, but in insti- 
tuting such conditions the spiritual content is inevitably kept in view. 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 329 

But what shall be the motive force for the creation of 
an international society? I hold that the sense of na- 
tional sin, or of national guilt, must supply the motive 
force. At present all the more advanced nations are to 
be censured because of their pride. Germany prides it- 
self on its science and its efficiency, England on its politi- 
cal liberalism, France on its logical conception of equal- 
ity, America on its democratic individualism. Each of 
the great nations dwells complacently upon its fair traits, 
and vaunts its special type of civilization as that which 
should rightfully prevail among mankind generally. 
The national defects, acknowledged perhaps by the 
critical few, are glozed over. Indeed the consciousness 
of a collective national character though latent is not 
yet distinct. It must be evoked. National self-knowl- 
edge must be promoted by the leaders and teachers of 
mankind, and with it must come, as in the case of the 
individual, the conscious recognition of deep defects — in 
the case of Germany the narrowness of the conception 
of the expert : * in the case of England the discrepancy 
between political liberalism as applied to the white in- 
habitants of the British Isles and of the self-governing 
dominions on the one hand, and the "benevolent despo- 
tism" exercised over the subject millions of India on the 
other; in America the effacement of tine individualism 
under the crushing pressure of mass opinion, etc. 

Moreover not only will the defects be admitted, but 

And in the very process of fitting the body to the spirit, the form 
to the content^ the content itself will be discerned more clearly and 
explicitly. 

* See the chapter in the World Crisis. 



330 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

their detrimental influence on other peoples will have to 
be frankly avowed — every nation must cry its Peccavi — 
the effect for instance on Europe of the French love 
of glory, the effect of the efficiency notion of the Ger- 
mans as it is at present penetrating all other nations,^ 
and in the still wider view the effect of Western civili- 
zation as a whole on the stationary civilization of China, 
on Egypt, on the myriads of Africa. The civilized peo- 
ples of the earth have sinned their sins and are best seen 
when we consider : 

A. The spoliation and outrages perpetrated by the 
Western nations, for instance at the time of the en- 
trance of the Allies into Pekin, the wholesale destruc- 
tion of human life and the mutilations of the natives on 
the Congo. It has been stated that some ten millions of 
the natives of Africa perished as victims of the white 
race. If these acts do not warrant our speaking of the 
sins of the civilized nations, what kind of himian behavior 
does deserve that name? 

B. The effect of European example in practically 
forcing the peoples of the Orient to adopt militarism 
and navalism. 

C. The effect of Western individualism in undermin- 

^ To myself as an individual I say : look to your radiations, con- 
sider the effects you produce on others; if the effects are harmful 
trace them to faults in your character, and let your desire and 
obligation to influence others beneficently be the spur to lead you 
to transform your own character. The same each people should 
say to itself. For instance the obvious faults of our democracy have 
retarded the progress of democracy in Europe. Our failure in 
municipal government is constantly quoted abroad as an argument 
against democracy. This should be a real incentive to rouse us out 
of our self-complacency. 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 331 

ing the religious foundation in Eastern civilization.^ 
The spreading of Christianity itself, despite the exem- 
plary influence of the higher type of missionary, must 
yet be classed, in one important respect, among the detri- 
mental influences exercised by the West upon the East. 
For Christianity, in the form in which it is usually- 
taught, tends to break up the sense of solidarity which is 
often strong among the less civilized peoples, without 
supplying an adequate principle upon which solidarity 
might be reestablished on a higher plane. Hence Chris- 
tian teaching in the Orient and in Africa, however 
friendly and merciful in intention, and however benefi- 
cent in many ways, is yet a disintegrating influence. 

The great problem of the spiritual education of the 
lower races will have to be taken up anew. Not only 
are individual missionaries of broader mental and moral 
horizons needed, the civilized nations as such must reach 
a common understanding and establish a union among 
themselves, the keynote of which shall be reverence for 
the undeveloped, that is to say divination of what, un- 
der right educational influence, they, the undeveloped, 
may come to mean for humanity. And a union of this 
kind, consecrated to a noble object, will at the same time 
be the means of leading the Western world out of the 
chaotic condition in which it is at present weltering. The 
object for which nations combine may not be their own 
peace, their own prosperity. The key to peace between 
the adult peoples is a common, effectual resolve to win 
new varieties of spiritual expression from the child and 
adolescent peoples of the earth. Peace must come inci- 

® Cf. Lord Cromer's remarks on this subject in his book on Egypt. 



332 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

dentally. The common object must be disinterested, 
spiritual, because there is a duty on the part of the civil- 
ized towards the uncivilized to exercise a spiritual func- 
tion. The task of humanity in general consists in ex- 
tending the web of spiritual relations so as to cover larger 
and still larger areas of the finite world. The family is 
only partly spiritualized. The vocations, the state, are 
not yet spiritualized. The international society hardly 
exists. But what I here endeavor to sketch is the human 
world as it would be in the light and under the influence 
of the spiritual ideal. And I set down as the saving 
task of the civilized nations that of extending the spirit- 
ual realm so as to cover backward, undeveloped peoples, 
so as to embody them in the corpus spirituale of man- 
kind. 

Some of the Principal Obstacles That Stand in the Way 
of the Organization of Mankind. 

The first obstacle is to be found in the inadequate 
theories that underlie international law. Seventeenth 
and eighteenth century thinking is still, strange to say, 
the theoretical foundation. Grotius and Vattel remain 
the chief authorities. Grotiua's theory is a system of 
empirical individualism with Christian individualism 
grafted upon it, to mitigate its harsher features. The 
right of conquest is admitted. A nation is allowed to 
punish another, punishment being taken in the crude 
sense, while what has been permitted under natural law 
is subsequently modified by counsels of perfection de- 
rived from Christian individualism. 

Vattel is the intellectual grandchild of Leibnitz. He 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 333 

derives from Leibnitz through Wolff. Vattel envisages 
the various states as so many individual entities without 
intrinsic ties. Peaceful coexistence and unhindered 
pursuit by each people of its own perfection or welfare 
with mutual aid to be voluntarily rendered are the ulti- 
mate conceptions beyond which this thinker does not 
venture. And if the root principles are thus infertile, 
small wonder that the fruit of the tree should be what 
it is. In any handbook of international law, the pre- 
ponderant space is allotted to the laws of war, and yet 
international law has proved impotent to restrain the 
passion of war, or even to prevent its excesses. Inter- 
national law binds the Samson of war with green withes 
which the giant snaps in derision. It is plain that we 
are still in the earliest stages, not only of international 
practice, but even of international thinking. The prob- 
lem of the right ethical relations between the nations 
has hardly been broached. 

Another conspicuous obstacle in the way of inter- 
national progress is to be seen in false hopes. Among 
the false hopes I class : 

A. The hope that increased facilities of intercourse 
will automatically bring about more friendly relations. 
To expect this is to forget that closeness accentuates 
repugnances as well as congenialities, increases antip- 
athy as well as amity. When nations come within short 
range of each other they resemble antipathetical kins- 
men who are compelled to live together. The Czechs and 
Germans in Bohemia would not hate each other as they 
do were they not such near neighbors. Spatial rap- 
prochement, for instance, between East and West will 



334 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

not of itself guarantee moral rapprochement — far from 
it. 

B. The hope that science may be relied on to bring 
the nations together. Science is neutral. Science is 
subservient to evil as well as good. Science is at pres- 
ent distilling the poisonous gases used on the European 
battlefields as well as inventing the improved methods of 
surgery. It has made possible instruments of destruc- 
tion such as savages might have shrunk from using. 
Moreover, scientific as well as artistic interests are 
partial manifestations of a people's life and the ethical 
relation is between peoples as totalities or collective 
entities — just as the ethical relation between man and 
man is between the whole man and the whole man, 
and not between some partial aspect of the man and 
of his fellow. Hence it is easy to explain why the scien- 
tists and the scholars of the different belligerent peoples 
were swept away by the war passion like the rest, and 
in their utterance have even carried animosity to greater 
lengths, expressing it in language calculated to wound 
more deeply and to leave more permanent scars. They 
felt that they belonged to the people as a whole, and 
when the occasion came for them to choose between their 
scientific co-workers across the frontier and their fel- 
low-nationals, they sided with the latter. 

C. The hope that reliance can be placed on inter- 
national trade to bring about ethical relations between 
nations. But trade, like science, is ethically neutral. 
In its own interest it is favorable to order and security 
in colonies and dependencies, and when, sufficiently en- 
lightened, to the impartial administration of justice. 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 335 

The European nations abolished the slave trade in 
Africa because it decimated the native population, and 
decreased the supply of labor.^ On the other hand Eng- 
land in the eighteenth century, even at that time the most 
liberal country of Europe, did not hesitate to wage war 
with Spain for the maintenance of the monopoly of the 
hideous slave-trade, and the Opium War occurred in the 
"full light" of the nineteenth century. But the most 
striking example of the ethical neutrality of the com- 
mercial mind is to be found in the recent partition of 
Africa between England, France, the Congo Free State 
and Germany. The methods which these four nations 
adopted in the "scramble for Africa" were marked by a 
perfect disregard of the rights of the native populations 
of the African continent. Two devices were used — proc- 
lamations, and treaties with native chiefs. The Queen 
of England proclaimed that a certain territory would 
thenceforth be a British possession, as if proclamation 
could convey a right to the territory. The German em- 
peror indulged in the same fiction. And there was a 
veritable race between French and English in the West ; 
between Germans and EngHsh in the East, as to which 
of the two could outdistance or outwit the other in treaty- 
making. Karl Peters came in disguise with a stock of 
blank treaties in his pocket. Forty or fifty treaties were 
concluded by the French annually for several years in 
the West — as if a treaty with a native chief, who might 
be bribed or coerced into lending his signature, could be 

^ See, however, the importation of Indian and Chinese coolies, and 
the surreptitious resurrection of the slave trade mentioned by Sir 
Charles Dilke in his Problems of Greater Britain, 



336 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the foundation of moral right to the territory occupied 
by his tribe. The European nations artfully employed 
the fictions of sovereignty in order to varnish their acts 
of plunder with a semblance of legality. Of course these 
proclamations and treaties were not intended to justify 
exploitation in the eyes of the natives — the natives were 
not consulted or regarded — ^but rather to base thereon 
the division of the spoils between the exploiters. A 
proclamation or the conclusion of a treaty with a chief 
was notice given to rivals not to interfere with the spoils 
reserved for the nation that had issued the proclamation 
or secured the treaty. It meant "hands off" to com- 
peting exploiters. 

If it be asked whether this picture is not too dark? 
Whether the civilized nations of the twentieth century 
in their dealings with the helpless natives were merely 
selfish? Whether their motives are so sinister? 
Whether they are not animated by better, more moral 
aims? the answer is that the commercial mind, and it 
is the commercial mind that chiefly rules the world 
today, allays its scruples and justifies its aggressions 
by the fallacy that to extend trade is to spread civiliza- 
tion, and to spread civilization is to contribute to the ad- 
vancement of the human race. The interests of trade 
and of civilization are simply identified. To build rail- 
roads, to stretch telegraph lines across the Dark Conti- 
nent, to launch steamboats on lakes that never heard the 
whistle of a steam engine before, these are assumed to be 
the evidences of "progress." Besides are not the natives 
disciplined in habits of industry, are they not encouraged 
to cultivate the raw products needed by Europe, and in 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 337 

return to receive the overflow of European markets? 
The instruments of civiHzation are thus confounded with 
civilization itself ; the means with the end ; while the real 
object, veiled by sophistry, is nevertheless the material 
benefit to be secured by the white race. Even the humane 
treatment of the natives, where it is humane, resembles 
somewhat too unpleasantly the fattening of the calf prior 
to its consumption by the owner. 

Furthermore, the interests of Trade being supposed 
to be paramount, it is held that any country the people 
of which do not sufficiently cultivate the products desired 
by other peoples, or who close their doors against the in- 
dustrial surplus of Europe, may be annexed, the land 
forcibly seized, and the inhabitants subjugated, and 
moreover that such action is right and proper and in the 
interests of humanity. So long as this view obtains, 
there will be no peace on earth. The competition for 
foreign territories and foreign markets, the scramble be- 
tween the "civilized" exploiters, will be indefinitely pro- 
vocative of new wars. 

The root disease that afflicts the world at the present 
day is the supremacy of the commercial point of view. 
Intercourse and exchange of products is no doubt de- 
sirable. The education of backward peoples in agri- 
culture and in industry for their own good and along 
their own line is indispensable. The fallacy of the 
commercial mind consists in erecting the means into the 
paramount end, in brusquing the love of independence 
which is so strongly entrenched, even among many primi- 
tive peoples, and in preventing their development in the 
direction prescribed by their own natures. All this for 



-» K<^T7t«i i „ wi . iap 



338 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the sake of the immediate increase of material wealth. 
The white race shall have the lion's share of the wealth ; 
the native population are to be accorded a lesser share, 
with which they must be content. This is the extent of 
the concession to humanity. This is, in plain words, what 
is signified by the haughty phrase — "the spread of civili- 
zation." 

The commercial mind is neither benevolent nor malev- 
olent — as little as science is. It seems at times to be 
beneficent ; at other times it seems to be almost fiendish 
— as in the case of the atrocities perpetrated on the 
Congo. It is not fiendish, it is simply ethically neutral 
or blind. 

From this series of reflections, certain conclusions 
may be drawn as to fundamental points of view relating 
to international law. The main principle is respect for 
the total personality of peoples, recognition of them as 
potential members of the spiritual body of mankind. 

The territory of a people is to be regarded as the 
body of that people's soul. Their independence is to 
be strictly respected. Expropriation or annexation is 
to be characterized as outrage. Intrusion, except for 
purposes of education, is to be forbidden. The concep- 
tion which underlies the scramble for Africa and for 
the Far East — that the material interests of the ad- 
vanced nations entitle them to force the backward to 
become receptacles of the industrial overflow of the 
West, the producers of raw material for the factories 
of the West must be abandoned.* 

^ As to practical steps that might be taken to give effect to this 
conception of international law, see my published address "The 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER 339 

And now the main point may once more be stated. 
The salvation of the civilized peoples, their spirituali- 
zation in the effort to spiritualize the less advanced de- 
mands a new turn in the history of humanity. Union in 
a common sublime object will overcome the antagonisms 
and discords that prevail among the civilized nations 
themselves. The sword will never be turned into a 
plow-share until the nations come to love the work of 
the plow — the work of spiritual tilth in the human field. 
The strong peoples will never cease to harm the weak, 
and in so doing to harm themselves, until they see in 
the weak, members of the corpus spirituale of mankind, 
depositaries of potential spiritual life in liberating 
which they the strong themselves will find increased 

Great Role of the United States After the War," in which is dis- 
cussed the creation of an international law-making body or a Parlia- 
ment of Parliaments. In connection with the latter, I should attach 
particular importance to the institution of commissions which may 
serve as a link between the international legislature and the less 
civilized peoples — ^the commissions to study the needs and gifts of 
those peoples with a view to securing their development along their 
own lines. In the case of civilized peoples that have until recently 
been stationary, like the Chinese, the commission representing the 
Western nations would sit in consultation with the most enlightened 
leaders of the Chinese people themselves, the common object being 
to discover the points of attachment in Chinese civilization which 
may wisely be made the starting point of a more modern and pro- 
gressive evolution. For instance the filial piety of the Chinese, the 
rectitude of their merchants, the absence of an aristocracy, and their 
civil service resting on education (despite its defects). In this man- 
ner it may become possible to avoid the abrupt, superficial, and in- 
finitely destructive substitution of modern ideas for the system at 
present existing, and gradual development will take the place of 
intrusive and uncongenial change. 



340 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

life. And the task of uplifting the lower peoples will 
never be successfully prosecuted until it is seen to be 
part of the task of humanity in general, which is to 
spread the web of spiritual relations over larger and 
ever larger provinces of the finite realm.^ 

^ I add that this conception will react on the internal life of 
democracy. Democracy is at present regarded as a relation be- 
tween equals. In fact, we have in America the negro population, 
the illiterate and backward immigrants. A truer conception of 
democracy depends on our realizing that within each people as well 
as between people and people there is the distinction of the more 
advanced and the less advanced groups. Democracy rightly con- 
ceived will be found to consist in the effort spent by the more 
advanced in each vocational group to uplift the less advanced, the 
more advanced themselves coming into possession of their spiritual 
worth in the degree that they realize this their task of leadership 
and its great responsibilities. 



CHAPTER IX 

RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP AS THE CULMINATING 
SOCIAL INSTITUTION 

In this chapter I shall undertake to sketch the plan 
of a religious society as determined by the spiritual 
ideal herein set forth. The religious society is the last 
term in the series of social institutions, and its peculiar 
office is to furnish the principle for the successive trans- 
formation of the entire series. It is to be the laboratory 
in which the ideal of the spiritual universe is created and 
constantly recreated, the womb in which the spiritual life 
is conceived. No single religious society can adequate- 
ly fulfill this purpose. The spiritual ideal itself must 
necessarily be conceived differently by different minds ; 
but the great general purpose will be the same, despite 
variations in shades of meaning and points of view. 

The fellowship of the religious society must be based 
on the voluntary principle ; membership must be a mat- 
ter of free choice* ^ In antiquity the boundaries of 

^ Among other ethical relations based on free election, friendship 
is the most important. In a separate Book of Friendship which I 
hope to publish, I intend to review the ideals of friendship as they 
have arisen from time to time in the history of civilized mankind — 
the ideal of Pythagorean friendship, the ideals presented by Aris- 
totle, Kant, Emerson. And I shall endeavor to show in each case 
the connection between the friendship ideal and the general philos- 
ophy of life. I shall then set forth that ideal of friendship which 

341 



342 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the political and religious organizations coincided. The 
citizen was under obligations as a part of his civic duty 
to worship the divinities of the state. In modern times 
a state church is still maintained in some countries and 
supported out of the public funds, while dissenting and 
nonconformist bodies exist more or less on sufferance at 
its side. But this arrangement is harmful, especially so 
to those whom it seems to favor. Erastianism paralyzes 
religious spontaneity. The state, it is true, is profoundly 
interested in the flourishing of ethical idealism, and in 
the constant rebirth in its midst of spiritual ideals. But 
it is not competent to determine what the character of 
these ideals shall be. The moment they cease to be freely 
produced they lose their life-giving power. The state 
within limits may enforce actions; it may not even at- 
tempt to enforce beliefs. 

On the other hand, the "secularization of the state" 
has given rise to the deplorable impression that the state 
exists only for so-called secular purposes, and has 
stripped the idea of the state of the lofty attributes with 
which the greatest thinkers of antiquity had clothed it. 
It is the function of the religious society, dwelling un- 
coerced in the midst of the state, to reinvest the state 
with the sacred character that belongs to it. I do not 
of course intend to exalt the state after the manner of 

is the corollary of the spiritual conceptions outlined in this volume: 
the friend being in my view one who assists spiritual development 
as a spectator. He is the faithful mirror of his friend's progress 
toward personality, the benevolent yet incorruptible recorder and 
appraiser. By this token friendship is distinguished from the inter- 
locking relations such as that between partners in marriage, voca- 
tional co-workers, etc. 



RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP 343 

Hegel, as if it were a kind of earthly god or to set 
it up as an object of religious or quasi-religious de- 
votion. The object of religious devotion is the infinite 
holy community, the spiritual universe. The function 
of the religious society is to generate the ideal of the 
infinite holy community, of the spiritual universe. The 
family, the vocation, the nation, are sub-groups of this, 
lesser entities. Even mankind itself is but a province 
of the ideal spiritual commonwealth that extends be- 
yond it. To concentrate worship upon the state or 
nation as some propose, would be to usurp for the part 
the piety that belongs to the whole. 

In describing a religious society three main aspects 
are to be borne in mind: 

The teaching, the organization, the worship. 

A. The Teaching 

In the religious society as here conceived there is to 
be worked out a body of doctrine, and there is to be a 
body of specially designated teachers. An ethico-re- 
ligious society cannot ignore or dispense with a general 
philosophy of life and statements of belief. It can- 
not restrict itself to encouraging practical morality with- 
out regard to what are called metaphysical subtleties. 
A moral society of this kind would soon become ossified. 
On the contrary, an ethico-religious society should excel 
in the fertility with which it gives rise to new metaphysi- 
cal constructions and original formulations of ethical 
faith. The will cannot be divorced from the intellect. 
The active volitional life cannot be successfully stimu- 



344 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

lated and guided without the assistance of the mind as 
well as of the imagination. 

But the relation between philosophy and formulas of 
belief on the one hand and volitional experience on the 
other should be the reverse of what it has been in the past. 
Here there must be a new departure. The doctrine, the 
formulations, whatever they may be, must not be dogma- 
tic but flexible. Growing originally out of ethical ex- 
perience, they must ever prove themselves apt to enlarge 
and deepen ethical experience. By this test they will be 
judged and they must therefore ever be subject to revi- 
sion and correction. Every dogma, every philosophic or 
theological creed, was at its inception a statement in 
terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience. But 
then it claimed for itself eternal validity, compressing 
the spiritual life within its mold, and checking further 
development. The body of doctrine which I desire and 
foresee will likewise be an interpretation of ethical expe- 
rience, intended to make explicit the fundamental prin- 
ciples implicit in ethical experience, and thereby clarify- 
ing it, and assisting its further unfolding. But it is not 
and should never be allowed to become dogmatic. The 
difference, I take it, is plain : in the one case experience 
contracted in procrustean fashion into a rigid formula, 
in the other case an elastic formula adapted to and sub- 
ordinated to the experience. 

Thus much for the body of teachings. There should 
also be a body of teachers. A teacher in an ethico- 
religious society will retain something of the character 
of his predecessors — priest, prophet, rabbi, pastor. The 
priest is the mediator of grace; the prophet is the seer 



RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP 345 

of visions; the rabbi is learned in the Divine law, and 
the pastor is the helper of the individual in securing 
his individual salvation. But these functions will now be 
seen in an altered light, and will be radically modified 
in their exercise. The magical attribute of the priest 
disappears. The confident prediction of future events, 
based on the assumption that the moral order is to be 
completely realized in human society, has ceased to be 
convincing. The Divine law is no longer identical with 
the Law revealed in the Scriptures and their commen- 
taries, and the salvation of the individual is to be ac- 
complished by other means. 

The religious teacher of the new kind is to resemble 
his predecessors in being a specialist. The word special- 
ist in this connection may, perhaps, awaken misgivings, 
and these must be removed. He is not a specialist in 
the sense of having a conscience unlike that of others, 
or in being the keeper of other men's consciences. Nor 
shall he impose his philosophy of life or his belief au- 
thoritatively, but propose it suggestively. His best 
results will be gained if he succeeds in so stimulating 
those whom he influences that they will attain an indi- 
vidualized spiritual outlook of their own, consonant with 
their own individual nature and need. But specialists 
of this kind are indispensable. The generality of men 
have neither the time nor the mental equipment to think 
out the larger problems of life without assistance, and 
the attempt on their part to do so leads to crudities 
and eccentricities of which one meets nowadays with 
many pathetic examples among those who have severed 
their connection with the traditional faiths, and have 



346 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tried in their groping fashion to invent a metaphysie or 
a creed of their own.^ 

The preparation of the ethical teacher for his special 
task consists in making himself thoroughly acquainted 
with the great religious systems of the past, in which 
much that is of permanent spiritual value is enshrined.^ 
He is to fit himself to revitalize what is vital, not to 
repristinate what is obsolete. There is required of him 
a first-hand knowledge of the great ethical systems, 
and of their philosophical backgrounds: furthermore 
acquaintance, so far as it is as yet accessible, with the 
moral history of mankind, as distinguished from the his- 
tory of ethical thinking; in addition, he should inten- 
sively study the economic, social and political problems 
of the time from the ethical point of view, and the 
psychology both of individual and national character, 
so far as that fascinating and difficult subject has been 
opened up by competent writers. Apprenticeship in 
the social reform movements of the day, direct touch 
with the inner life of people, on its healthful as well 
as on its sick side, is also presupposed. 

^ In certain Ethical Societies abroad, the fear of encouraging the 
rise of a new clericalism led to the plan of drawing for ethical 
teachers on professors of universities^ and others engaged in various 
lines of practical activity. These persons could of necessity give 
only the leavings of their time and thought to the complex questions 
which they undertook to discuss ; and the experiment, as might have 
been foreseen, proved disastrous. 

^ It has been said that the science of today lives only in super- 
seding the science of yesterday. V^hether this be true of science 
or not it is not true of religion. The religions of the past are not 
merely superseded. There is much in them that is to be reinter- 
preted, and thus perpetuated. 



RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP 347 

Since no single person can be adequately prepared in 
these various subjects, and since a variety of gifts and 
talents is demanded, it follows that the teaching func- 
tion shall be exercised by a body or group of teachers, 
not by a single pastor at whose feet the congregation 
are supposed to sit. Some of the persons engaged in 
this work will excel as public speakers, others as writers, 
others as teachers of the young, others as leaders of 
vocational groups. But all these different function- 
aries must learn to work, not only in harmony, but in 
organic, reciprocal support, themselves illustrating in 
their group life the spiritual relation, the knowledge 
and the practice of which they are to carry out into the 
world. The guild or group idea must be applied to the 
religious teachers of the future. 

B, The Organization 

Every religion exhibits a certain form of organiza- 
tion peculiar to itself and derived from its controlling 
idea. The organization of the Buddhist fellowship is de- 
pendent on the Buddhist ideal of preparation for ab- 
sorption in Nirvana. The constitution of the Jewish 
synagogue reflects the conception of the relation of the 
Chosen People, as an elite corps of the divinity. The 
organization of the Christian church is characterized by 
its bifurcation into an ecclesia militans and an ecclesia 
triumphans, and further by the idea of incorporation into 
the body of Christ, a difficult mystical conception as of 
a typical divine individual including within his body a 
multitude of other individuals. 

The organization of the ethico-religious society has 



348 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

been foreshadowed in the chapter on the vocations. The 
society is to be divided into vocational groups. In each 
vocational group is to be worked out the specific ethical 
ideal of that vocation. In the groups the general 
ethical philosophy of life is to be applied, tested and 
enriched. The so-called ethical teachers will here come 
into fruitful contact with those who are in touch at, 
first hand with actual conditions, and are cognizant of 
the difiiculties to be surmounted in ethicizing vocational 
standards. The members of the groups in democratic 
fashion will contribute to the advancement, not only of 
ethical practice, but of ethical knowledge, and thus be- 
come on their side teachers of the teachers. The danger 
of the formation of an ethical clergy will be averted. 
The teachers will be in certain respects the pupils of 
the taught, and the relation be reciprocal, that is, ethical. 
> Among the groups the vocational group of Mothers 
will occupy the central place. The influence of women, 
especially of the mother group, must penetrate the re- 
ligious society through and through, for the purpose of 
drawing the entire fellowship together into a coherent 
unity. Women henceforth will take a deeper interest in 
the ethical development of human society. A main fac- 
tor, if not the only factor in the ethical development of 
human society, is the elevation of the vocational stand- 
ards. The group of mothers will therefore be in close 
touch with the other vocational groups in order to gain 
a knowledge of the higher standards therein proposed, 
in order to appraise them, and to inspire the growing 
generation with the devoted purpose to carry these stand- 
ards out in practice. 



RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP 349 

C The Worship or Public Manifestation of Religion 

The ideal of worship likewise must undergo transfor- 
mation. It has meant an act of homage toward a su- 
perior or supreme individual ; it has meant eulogistic af- 
firmation of the power, wisdom, goodness, of that indi- 
vidual ; it has meant prayer or petition for help from that 
individual. It has also meant spiritual edification. 

In all these various modes, religious worship hereto- 
fore has focused attention on a single individual deity 
as one who embodies in himself the sum of perfection. In 
thus presenting the ideal of perfection, it has encour- 
aged preference for unity at the expense of plurality. 
The salient feature of the spiritual ideal sketched in 
this volume is the affirmation, on ethical grounds, that 
plurality is of equal dignity with unity, and hence that 
the divine ideal is to be represented not as One, but 
as manifold; not as an individual, however superemi- 
nent, but as an infinite holy community, — every human 
being being in his essential nature a member of that 
community. 

But can worship be offered to the members of a holy 
community? In a certain sense one might say, Yes, 
preeminently so, since worship may be taken to mean 
Worthship, and the worth intrinsic in our fellowmen 
is the object of our unceasing homage. At the same 
time very different associations have gathered about 
the word. Public worship consists largely of eulogistic 
singing, prayer, adoration, genuflexion, and these are 
appropriate only to deity conceived as an individual. 
We cannot even say with the Psalmist "the heavens de- 



350 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

clare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his 
handiwork." For though the beauty and order apparent 
in Nature is one aspect of nature on which we dehght to 
dwell, yet we cannot disingenuously suppress the coun- 
ter evidence of disorder, ugHness and suffering which 
Nature no less obtrudes on our sight. The argument 
from design implied in the Psalmist's words is no longer 
tenable. Certainly we cannot any longer pray for ma- 
terial assistance as our forefathers did, or invoke super- 
natural intervention in situations where human science 
and human helpfulness are impotent. But worship also 
aims at ethical edification, by holding up to the mind the 
moral ideal as an object of imitation, and as a rebuke 
to man's shortcomings. This indeed is its highest func- 
tion. Nevertheless the moral ideal, as we conceive it, is 
incapable of being presented in the guise of an individual 
being, no matter by what superlative language the limi- 
tation inseparable from individuality be concealed. The 
bare attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are 
abstract and convey no positive meaning whatever. In 
actual worship a concrete image is invariably associated 
with the notion of the individualized Deity, such as the 
Father image or the Christ image. And as soon as this 
is done, the vast ethical ideal tends to shrink to the 
dimensions of a human image; and instead of the ideal 
in its fullness, only certain selected but inadequate as- 
pects of ethical excellence are presented to the worshiper. 

And yet in an ethico-religious society also the pub- 
lic manifestation of religion is indispensable. Of what 
elements shall it consist ? 

First, there are to be the public addresses by the teach- 



RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP 351 

ers, having for their main object to arouse or intensify a 
certain kind of spiritual distress, and then as far as 
possible to appease it. Every religion in my judgment 
originates in a particular kind of anguish, and is an at- 
tempt to assuage it. The spiritual distress in which the 
ethico-religious society has its origin is the agonizing 
consciousness of tangled relations with one's fellow- 
beings, and the inexpressible longing to come into right 
relations with them. He is fit to be a public teacher of 
this religion who profoundly experiences this distress, 
who desires nothing so much as to cease to be, for his 
part, a thorn in his neighbor's side. We are that, eacli 
of us, inevitably. The more this feeling is strong in him 
the more will he arouse similar feelings in others, and 
thus awaken those who are spiritually asleep, the self- 
righteous, the self-satisfied, and he will then indicate to 
the utmost of his power, the way of relief. 

The specific ethical ideals of life are also to be pre- 
sented in public assemblies — the ideals of private ethics, 
of marriage, friendship, and the rest. These expressions 
of the specific ideals, charged with feeling, and taking on 
appropriate imagery, will gradually attain a certain 
classical fitness — classical at least for a time^ — and may 
be used as public readings. 

But is there a substitute for prayer? 

Among the advantages of prayer is often mentioned 
this: that in it the soul reaches out towards its source, 
and in so doing wonderfully recruits its spiritual energy. 
It finds, ethically speaking, its second wind. It reaches 
down beneath its utmost strength to find an increment 
of strength not previously at its disposal. The question 



352 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

is whether this increment of strength cannot be obtained 
more surely and to better purpose in another way, 
namely, by concentrating attention on the spiritual need 
of the fellow-beings with whom we are in daily touch, 
and by becoming aware to what an extent the finer na- 
ture imprisoned in them is dependent for its release 
upon our exertions. The appeal of the God in our 
neighbor is the substitute for the appeal in prayer to the 
God in heaven, the call of the stifled spiritual nature in 
the men and women at our side, is to draw out of us our 
utmost latent force, the strengths underneath the 
strength. 

The common life we share with our fellow-members 
in the religious society demands expression in song and 
in responsive services. The high wave of this com- 
mon life welling up in us, rising to the surface, makes 
the glow of religious meetings, gives them fervor, and a 
touch of rapture, not indeed the common life conceived 
as a uniform life, but as the life we live in others, and 
they in us. 

The addresses that awaken and appease spiritual 
pain, the presentation of the various modes of right 
living, the songs that lift the individual above his private 
self and help him to live, not indeed submerged, but 
rather spiritually accentuated in the life of the whole, 
these are the public manifestations of ethical religion 
as I see them. They will contribute to make of the 
society itself the symbol of its ethical faith. We shall 
not have an external symbol like the cross: the fellow- 
ship itself will be our symbol. 

There will also be festivals. Every religion must 



RELIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP 353 

have its festivals. In place of Baptism the solemn tak- 
ing of responsibility for the spiritual development of 
the child. A festival of vocational initiation, like the 
ancient assumption of the toga. Festivals of citizenship, 
inspired by the ideal of the national character as one 
to be spiritually transformed. Festivals of humanity 
in connection with the commemoration of great events 
in the history of our race and of great leaders who were 
inspired in some degree by the ideal task of humanity. 
Festivals of the seasons, deriving their significance from 
the spiritual interpretation of the corresponding seasons 
of human life, — youth, middle age, old age. And a 
solemn though not mournful festival in commemoration 
of the departed. 

The rehgious assembly should itself be organized; 
the members of the different vocational groups should 
be allocated to different parts of the meeting hall, as 
were the Guilds in certain of the mediaeval cathedrals. 

Besides the public manifestations, the private religion 
will receive attention. The religious society as a whole 
is to be the microcosm of the spiritual macrocosm, a 
miniature model of the ideal society, but care must also 
be taken for the private communion of the individual 
with the spiritual presences which the ideal evokes. There 
should be a special breviary for the sick, a Book of Con- 
solation for the bereaved, a Book of Friendship, a Book 
of direction for those who pass through the experience of 
sin, and a book of preparation for those who face the end. 



CHAPTER X 

THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 

The view of life that man has on leaving it is the 
final test of his philosophy of life. These are my 
thoughts: It is time to detach thyself from this earth. 
The shadows are lengthening. Look around you and 
note the strange changes that have taken place in the 
men and women of your acquaintance. Those that you 
once knew in their prime are now old and wrinkled, — 
and how many already dead! As you survey the pro- 
cession of life, how many vacant places are there in it! 
How many true and loyal comrades have been swept 
away! Or go into the busy streets of the city, and 
look at the multitude passing through them. You are 
still one of this multitude. Presently you will drop out. 
There will perhaps be a little ripple on the surface, 
and then the stream will flow on as before. How curi- 
ous is it to think that this frame of hfe which sustains 
such high faculties should crumble into a little heap of 
dust at the touch of the wand of death! Detach thy- 
self, therefore, relax thy hold by anticipation as thou 
shalt soon relax it actually. But detachment does not 
mean cold inattention or unnatural shrinking from the 
earthly scene, like that of the monk in his cell. Relax 
thy hold on what is earthly in the earthly scene, and 
fix thy loving attention all the more on what is spirit- 

354 



THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 355 

ually significant in it. Regard with a friendly eye 
the beauty of the natural landscape around thee — ^yon- 
der lake and yonder noble mountain summit. They 
are earthly, yet are they also hieroglyphs and symbols. 

Still more is this true of thy social relations. De- 
tach thyself means relax thy hold on what is transient 
in those relations. Cling all the more firmly to what 
is spiritual in them. The earth is thy foundation, thou 
art Antaeus as long as thou remainest in contact with 
the earth. Until the very last thou must lean for 
strength upon the earthly bases and substrata. 

Consider the drive of the human race through the 
time and space world, and its net result. Thou stand- 
est now on a high tower. Lean over the parapet and 
peer as far out into the future as thou canst. Thou 
standest as did Moses on Mount Pisgah. Strain thy 
eyes to catch sight of the Promised Land. But re- 
member that the Promised Land turned out to be a 
land still of promise, not of fulfilment, — a land in which 
the prophetic soul of Israel matured its visions of a 
fulfilment never on earth to be attained. 

Remember that as thou art linked to thy ancestry, 
so art thou linked to posterity. The future centuries 
of the human race are like the future years of an in- 
dividual. Thou art keenly interested in what may hap- 
pen hereafter to the race with which thou art inter- 
linked. But the race, like the individual, will be cut 
off and become extinct before ever the ideal is reached. 
Remember, therefore, that the purpose for which hu- 
manity exists is achieved at every moment in every- 
one who appropriates the fruits of partial success and 



356 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

frustration. Whosoever standing on the earth as a 
foundation builds up for himself the spiritual universe 
attains the purpose of human existence. There is in- 
deed progress in the explicitness with which the spirit- 
ual ideal is conceived, and we are immeasurably inter- 
ested in the greater light to be attained by our posterity. 
But the essential fruition of the contact of the infinite 
that is in us with the finite world is achievable at every 
moment in every human being. And this gives an en- 
tirely new meaning to the spiritual gains achieved in 
solitude, which seem vain because there are no wit- 
nesses. But neither will there be witnesses when the 
last human beings perish on earth. The spiritual brav- 
ery of the shipwrecked man who sinks on the lonely 
ocean springs from the conviction that though the sea 
can overwhelm him there is that in him greater than 
ocean's immensity; a conviction achieved through the 
experience of living in the life of others. The same 
is the gain achieved by the sick man who lies in soli- 
tude like a helpless log in the darkened room. The 
altruistic philosophy fails in accounting for the moral 
grandeur that attaches to the spiritual victories gained 
in silence and solitude. 

Face the terrors of life before you leave life. Be 
resolute to the last not to cherish illusions. Face the 
terrors of life, the absence of observable design, the 
cruelties, the ferocities. Think of William Blake's 
poem "The Tiger": "Did he who made the lamb make 
thee?" In your philosophy there is no question any 
longer of a Creator. Creation is an attempt to explain 
the coexistence of the imperfect with the perfect, to ac- 



THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 357 

count for a lower stage in terms of a higher. The ulti- 
mate inability of man to understand, to explain, is one 
of the principal frustrations he meets with, is the cruci- 
fixion of man at the point of his intellect. 

The radical incompetence of man to grasp with his 
intellect the world as a **universe," is to be faced by 
him and accepted without qualification. It marks off 
this philosophy of life from those philosophies and the- 
ologies which have attempted to explain the universe, 
and which, while affecting humility, are the dupes of 
an unwarranted self-confidence. Unqualified admis- 
sion of the incompetence of the human intellect to re- 
solve the world riddle is the determining factor in the 
more profound humility which charatcterizes the re- 
ligion of ethical experience. Agnosticism on the intel- 
lectual side is the very condition of the transcending 
ethical conviction subsequently attained. Without in- 
tellectual agnosticism there is no ethical certainty. 

Consider now frustration and its supreme outcome, 
or the various points at which man is crucified. I have 
mentioned the intellectual crucifixion, due to the in- 
competence of the mind to understand. I must now 
speak of still more poignant experiences due to the in- 
competence of man adequately to fulfill the moral law, 
or to carry out the spiritual relation in finite terms. 

I have reached the bourne, or am very near it. The 
shadows lengthen, the twilight deepens. I look back 
on my life and its net results. I have seen spiritual 
ideals, and the more clearly I saw them, the wider ap- 
peared the distance between them and the empirical con- 
ditions, and the changes I could effect in those condi- 



358 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tions. I have worked in social reform, and the impres- 
sion I have been able to make now seems to me so 
utterly insignificant as to make my early sanguine as- 
pirations appear pathetic. I have seen the vision of 
democracy in the air, and on the ground around me I 
have seen the sordid travesty of democracy — not only 
in practice but in idea. I have caught the far outlook 
upon the organization of mankind, the extension of the 
spiritual empire over the earth by the addition to it of 
new provinces, and I do not find even the faintest be- 
ginnings, or recognition of the task which the advanced 
nations should set themselves. I scrutinize closely my 
relations to those who have been closest to me, — and I 
find that I have been groping in the dark with respect 
to their most real needs, and that my faculty of divina- 
tion has been feeble. I look lastly into my heart, my 
own character, and the effort I have made to fuse the 
discordant elements there, to achieve a genuine integrity 
there, and I find the disappointment in that respect the 
deepest of all. 

These are the various points of my life at which I 
have undergone the crucifixion. I am like Arnold 
Winkelried, who gathered the sheaf of spears into his 
breast, and even pressed them inward, to make a way 
for liberty. So do I press the sharp-pointed spears of 
frustration into my breast to make way for spiritual 
liberty. For these cruel spears turn into shafts of light, 
radiating outward along which my spirit travels, build- 
ing its final nest — the spiritual universe. 

Consider the new and profounder humility. In 
ethical experience is revealed the plan of the spiritual 



THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 359 

relations, but the entities or substances which are thus 
related are incognizable, unknowable. Did I know 
them I should be able to solve the riddle of the universe. 
I should know how it is that the finite exists side by- 
side with the infinite. But I cannot know. I cannot 
enter into the counsels of the multiform godhead. There 
are the mighty powers that weave and interweave be- 
hind the veil, but the veil between them and myself is 
down, not to be lifted. Within the palace of light is 
the solemn and serene assembly of the gods: I, man, 
stand at the gate. 

The world as we know it is itself the veil, the screen, 
that shuts out the interplay, the weavings and the inter- 
weavings of the spiritual universe. But at least at one 
point, in the ethical experience of man, is the screen 
translucent. The plan of the spiritual relation is there 
traced in outline. It is this plan that conveys the cer- 
tainty as to what verily exists beyond, within, beneath. 

As to my empirical self, I let go my hold on it. I 
see it perish with the same indifference which the mate- 
rialist asserts, for whom man is but a compound of 
physical matter and physical force. It is the real self, 
of which the empirical was the substratum, upon which 
I tighten my hold. I do not assert immortality, since 
immortality, like creation, is a bridge between the phe- 
nomenal and the spiritual levels. Creation is the bridge 
at the beginning; immortality the bridge at the end. 
Were I able to build the bridge, I should know. I do 
not affitm immortality. I affirm the real and irre- 
ducible existence of the essential self. Or rather, as 
my last act, I affirm that the ideal of perfection which 



360 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

my mmd inevitably conceives has its counterpart in the 
ultimate reality of things, is the truest reading of that 
reality whereof man is capable. I turn away from 
the thought of the self, even the essential self, as if that 
could be my chief concern, toward the vaster infinite 
whole in which the self is integrally preserved. I af- 
firm that there verily is an eternal divine life, a best 
beyond the best I can think or imagine, in which all 
that is best in me, and best in those who are dear to me, 
is contained and continued. In this sense / bless the 
universe. And to be able to bless the universe in one's 
last moments is the supreme prize which man can wrest 
from life's struggles, life's experience, 

I look back upon my life once more, and am grateful 
for the eternal worth which it was permitted me in this 
frail vessel of my mortal existence to hold, for the shim- 
mer of the spiritual reality of things which I was per- 
mitted to see; grateful especially to those who loved 
me, and whom I was permitted to love, and who were 
to me in some measure revealers of the eternal life. 

Consider lastly the peace that passeth understand- 
ing. Now, if ever, this peace should descend upon me. 
There is a kind of peace that is accessible to the un- 
derstanding, and there is the peace that passeth imder- 
standing. The peace that can be understood is that 
which consists in the relief of pain. It arises in various 
ways. After an acute attack of physical pain how like 
bahn is felt the succeeding absence of pain. After a 
prolonged sickness, when the convalescent takes his first 
walk, what a sweet tranquillity fills his mind! There 
is also the mental relief that comes when some danger 



THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE 361 

has been safely passed; the peace of the sheltered fire- 
side to one who has passed through a storm. Again, 
there is the peace that follows pecuniary anxiety, or the 
removal of some carking care, as when an erring son is 
reclaimed, or an estranged wife or husband is found 
anew. 

But the peace that passeth understanding is that 
which comes when the pain is not relieved, which sub- 
sists in the midst of the painful situation, suffusing it, 
which springs out of the pain itself, which shimmers 
on the crest of the wave of pain, which is the spear of 
frustration transfigured into the shaft of light. 

It is upon those we love that we must anchor our- 
selves spiritually in the last moments. The sense of 
interconnectedness with them stands out vividly by way 
of contrast at the very moment when our mortal con- 
nection with them is about to be dissolved. And the 
intertwining of our life with theirs, the living in the 
life that is in them, is but a part of our living in the 
infinite manifold of the spiritual life. The thought of 
this, as apprehended, not in terms of knowledge, but 
in immediate ewperience, begets the peace that passeth 
understanding. And it is upon the bosom of that peace 
that we can pass safely out of the realm of time and 
space. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX I 

SPIRITUAL SELF-DISCIPLINE 

The preceding volume in its entirety and in every part is 
nothing else than a book of spiritual self-discipline. Every 
religion presents to its followers as real objects that the eye 
has not seen. The certainty of the existence of these objects, 
religious certainty, religious conviction, springs from one or 
other kind of need and distress. The object that the eye has 
not seen is believed in because it corresponds to that need, and 
relieves that distress. Furthermore, the conviction is strength- 
eaed, the certainty intensified, by two methods : ( 1 ) elabora- 
tion of the ideas presented; (2) performing acts in the doing 
of which the existence of the objects is presupposed. Thus the 
idea of the Heavenly Father corresponds to the childlike need 
of protection. The elaboration of this idea in theological sys- 
tems strengthens its hold, every idea being powerful as an active 
force in proportion as it is worked out in detail and linked up 
with other ideas. And ceremonies, prayers, acts of worship in 
the doing of which the reality of the Father-God is presup- 
posed, strengthen the belief in him. Conduct is one of the 
chief sources of belief. The more frequently a devout Roman 
Catholic prays to the Virgin Mary, the more firmly will he be 
convinced that she exists and hears him. These features are 
common to all religion: unseen objects are presented as real; 
the belief in their reality is augmented by elaboration of the 
ideas ; and above all their hold is reinforced by practice 
founded on and presuming the reality of the ideas. 

The unseen object which the religion of spiritual experience 
presents is the unique personality. The lines along which the 
ideas are to be elaborated have been sketched in the above. 

365 



366 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Conduct based on the presumption that the divine nature exists 
in every human being is the principal means of fortifying that 
conviction, and this presumption itself rests on the fundamental 
fact of worth. 

The difference in rank between the various religions depends 
on the kind of need which they seek to satisfy. It may be 
physical, as when the worshiper prays for large herds and 
fruitful crops. It may be the urging of a passion, as when a 
man prays for revenge on his enemies. And it may be ethical. 
And if ethical, it may be purely ethical, or ethical with non- 
ethical elements admixed. A religion is neither approved nor 
condemned because it satisfies a need. The judgment passed on 
it depends on the kind of need it undertakes to satisfy. 

Seek to raise the plus traits to the Nth degree. Seek through 
spiritual sex interaction to release the spiritual life in the child. 
Bring to birth in thyself the idea of the state, etc. Every 
chapter of this volume contains some direction as to the lines of 
conduct to be followed. The principal self-discipline consists 
in the effort to follow these lines. 

But experience tells us that the effort may be hindered or 
helped in certain ways. I shall mention a few of the helps and 
hindrances : 

Physical and Mental Athleticism are helps to Moral Ath- 
leticism. Ethics is a science of energetics. Bodily and mental 
energy is favorable to ethical energizing. By mental energy I 
understand especially the habit of vigorously attacking com- 
plex and difficult mental problems. 

Right Asceticism is related to Ethical Development. I ex- 
clude self-abnegation and self-repression practiced as drill 
apart from any particular occasion requiring them, holding 
that self-repression should always be incidental to self-expres- 
sion. This applies especially to the hygiene of the sex passion. 
A positive ideal of the sex relation, as in marriage, is an inval- 
uable help in ennobling and thereby restraining the passion. 

The Ethical Life is the supremely Planful Life. There is a 
hierarchy of ends of which the ethical is the apex. The ethical 



SPIRITUAL SELF-DISCIPLINE 367 

end is the supreme end to which all others are to be planfully 
subordinated. The habit of conducting one's life planfully is 
favorable to ethical behavior. I say planfully, not pedanti- 
cally, due regard being always had to spontaneity. 

Among hindrances to Ethical development may be mentioned 
the tendency to be satisfied with the minor perfections. The 
better is the greatest enemy of the best. The disproportionate 
value set on the embellishments of life is but one illustration of 
this point. 

A great hindrance to the spiritual life is the necessity under 
which we lie of restricting our actual ethical relations to a 
■few persons. We cannot extend our influence to the millions of 
China and India. We cannot even deeply influence a consider- 
able number of our fellow citizens. On ethical grounds we do 
acknowledge the claims of each individual, of all these myriads 
of human beings. Yet as far as any actual good we can do 
them is concerned, we are powerless, and must leave them to 
their fate. The tragic aspect of life comes home to us sharply 
at this point. Intensity must take the place of extensity. 
Intensive spiritual relations with a few will teach us at least 
to conceive worthily of those personalities whom we cannot 
directly aff^ect, and to invest them in idea with the honor which! 
is their due. 

Intimate spiritual relations with a few will also counteract 
the unethical habit of labeling those with whom we come into 
casual contact according to the special functions they happen 
to exercise. Thus a letter-carrier is apt to be thought of as 
an animated machine to carry letters, a stenographer as a kind 
of animated machine to take dictation, the servant in the house 
a machine to render physical service. The more complete our 
appreciation of personality is in the case of the few, the more 
we shall be impelled to transfer the concept of personality, at 
least in its outlines, to all others. In this way our friendships, 
our close relations, will not restrict our ethical horizon. In the 
narrower circle we shall engender those ideas which in thought 



368 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

at least we can carry out to the farthest limits of human 
society. 

But among the hindrances to ethical practice the two most 
conspicuous must not be omitted. They are pity and terror, 
pity for the pain suffered by others, fear of pain for oneself. 
Aristotle regarded it as the high function of the tragic drama 
to liberate men from these disturbing factors. The two are 
combined and in consequence exacerbated to an extreme degree 
in those situations where the pain suffered by another person is 
at the same time poignantly felt as one's own pain. And the 
anguish felt in seeing the physical suffering of another is even 
exceeded in witnessing the moral degradation of another, as of 
an erring son or an apparently irreclaimable husband or wife. 
The doctrine of frustration as explained in this volume is in- 
tended to show the way of relief in such situations. But it is 
only by not shirking the pain, by permitting it fully to pene- 
trate, by uncovering the breast entirely to the entrance of the 
pointed spear that we shall have the experience of the trans- 
formation of it into the shaft of light. 



APPENDIX II* 

THE EXERCISE OF FORCE IN THE INTEREST OF 

FREEDOM 

Force is a moral adiaphoron. The stigma attaching to the 
use of force belongs rather to its abuse. The employment of 
force is good or bad according as the ends for which it is used 
are good or bad. 

The precept of non-resistance in the Sermon on the Mount is 
to be understood as a piece of ethical irony. 

The right, or to be more expHcit, the duty, of society to 
coerce individual members of it rests on the same ground and 
holds within the same limits as the duty of the individual to co- 
erce himself. Self-coercion depends on the difference in the 
quality of one's impulses, on the choice one is bound to make be- 
tween competitive ends. Self-coercion is of two kinds: stimu- 
lative and repressive; stimulative to overcome inertia, repres- 
sive -Eo subject wrong to right impulses. 

He who denies the duty of self-coercion, to be consistent, 
must fall back on the position of the Cynics. For the Cynics 
were indeed consistent. They asserted not only the right of 
the individual to be free from outside compulsion, but also the 
right of each individual moment of the individual's life to be 
lived without regard or subjection to future moments. Hence 
they rejected civilization and its tasks, inasmuch as the prose- 
cution of any task involves the subordination of the present to 
the content of some future moment. 

But if the coercion of a man by himself be admitted, it fol- 

^ A paper read before the Fourth Conference on Legal and Social 
Philosophy at Columbia University, November, 1915. (Reprinted 
from the International Journal of Ethics, April, 1916, pp. 420-423.) 

369 



370 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

lows that the exercise of force upon a man by society must in 
principle be likewise admitted. For we are social by nature; 
we take an interest in the achievement by each one of his 
ends, and we regard such achievement as a social-benefit. 

As to the limits within which outside interference is to be 
permitted and welcomed, these can best be ascertained by 
fastening attention upon the end to be attained. And here 
the positive conception of freedom seems to be the most help- 
ful, — freedom defined as the release in each one of his essential 
self, that is, of his distinctive gift and capability, or of that 
in him which is unique or most nearly so. A society in which 
such valuable contributions were elicited from each would be 
the ideal society. Stimulative and repressive social coercion 
are justified in so far as they provoke energy and check dis- 
turbing impulses, — always of course without discouraging 
spontaneity, which is the very good to be secured. 

The antithesis of reason and force common in discussions of 
this subject seems misleading and inadequate ; since reason is a 
faculty of inference and not of preference, has to do with the 
adapting of means to ends, and does not of itself aff^ord guid- 
ance in the choice of ends. 

The concept of freedom as defined is more illuminating. Let 
freedom and force be contrasted, not reason and force. 

The idea of law that would follow from what has been said 
may be illustrated by comparing the action of law with that of 
automatism in the human body. The system of co-ordinations 
by which we learn to walk, or acquire any kind of skill, such as 
that of performing on a musical instrument, is at first painfully 
and consciously acquired. Consciousness superintends every 
step in the process. But after a time the sequences reel off auto- 
matically. Consciousness retires from the field, ascends to a 
higher plane, and devotes itself to more interesting and sig- 
nificant business. Law, taking it in its broadest sense, may be 
regarded as the automatic machinery of freedom. It is the 
system of stimulations and repressions which the experience of 
mankind at any given time has found conducive to the attain- 



THE EXERCISE OF FORCE 371 

ment of the superior ends of life. In the minds of the more 
advanced members of the community repressive laws like the 
prohibitions of murder, theft, etc., have already become auto- 
matic. Such a thing as questioning or transgressing these laws 
never once in a lifetime occurs to them. (Of the stimulative 
laws, such as the requirement to pay taxes in support of the 
progressive interests of society, the same is not yet true.) As 
regards the backward members of society, however, the repres- 
sive laws are educative. Just as in certain diseases the con- 
valescent needs to acquire anew the art of walking, which his 
neighbors exercise without thinking, so the backward members 
of society have to learn painfully those habits of repression 
which for others have sunk below the threshold of conscious- 
ness. 

Social compulsion therefore may be defined as discipline in 
the interest of positive freedom. We may expect that in future 
this salutary kind of compulsion will go to even much greater 
lengths than it has yet gone. Society as organized in the state 
has undoubtedly the right to interfere in the choice of the sexes 
by prohibiting the marriage of persons afflicted with infectious 
disease. If the study of human character could ever be so far 
developed as to determine what kind of temperaments are radi- 
cally incompatible with one another (a bare throw in the air of 
course), it would be within the province of the state to pro- 
hibit the conjugal union of such temperaments, and thus to 
prevent the disastrous effects on real freedom which such in- 
compatibilities are apt to cause. 

I am well aware of the perils of this point of view. There is a 
brutal factor in the action of society, as in that of individuals* 
A given community is apt to mistake its prejudices for prin- 
ciples, its torpor for conservatism, its superstitions for spirit- 
uality. Such apprehensions as those that weighed on the mind 
of John Stuart Mill as set forth in his Essay on Liberty are not 
to be lightly dismissed. And yet the main trend of his argu- 
ment was plainly determined by an individualistic conception of 
liberty which many of us no longer share. It is safe to say 



372 AN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

that on the whole the benefits of coercion outweigh the detri- 
ments. We have only to picture to ourselves a state of society 
in which these coercions should not exist to realize that this is 
so. The dangers are real, but are due to the abuse of force and 
not to the exercise of it under the controlling idea of positive 
freedom which is here proposed. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Achilles, 210 

Africa, exploitation of, 187f, 

S35 
Altruism, 79, 218, 220, 256 
Antaeus, 355 

aTo^ \ey6fievoVf 228 

A priori knowledge, 105f, 111 

Architecture, 286n 

Aristotle, 105, 127, l68n, 190, 

281, 305, 319, S65 
Ark of the Covenant, 77 
Arnold, Matthew, 10, 298 
Arnold von Winkelried, 358 
Art, relation to Ethics, 277f; 

limitations, 287n; students of, 

296 
Asceticism, 36S 

Bacon, Vn Studies, 10 
Baptism, 353 
Beatrice, 170 
Beauty, 281f 
Bereavement, 64, l62f 
Bergson, 108, 131n 
Blackstone, 185 
Blake, William, 356 
Bloch, 242 
Bluntschli, 327f 
Buddha, 16, 32, 199, 347 

Caesar Borgia, 172 
Cana, feast at, 206 



Categorical Imperative, 75f ; and 

hypothetical, 80 
Causality, "prejudice of,** 11 Of, 

136, 141, 171 
Christianity, an estimate of, 30- 

42; other-worldliness of, 140, 

268; national, 321; forced on 

the East, 331 
Church, 347 
Citizenship, 322 
Confucius, 16,31,299 
Congo, atrocities in, 330, 335, 

338 
Conscience, origin of, 78 
Copernicus, 141 
Creation, doctrine of, 139, 356 
Cromer, Lord, 33 In 
Crucifixion, of man, 35 7f 
Cynics, 366 

Dante, 198n, 283 

Darwinism, 59, 78f, 120 

"Death in Life,** 225 

Decalogue, 198 

Democracy, ethical aspect of, 
125, 143; political, 319n; evils 
in, 321, 330n; new conception 
of, 340n 

Dependence, 226 

Dilke, Sir Charles, 335n 

Discipline, 244f 

Duality, of character traits, 208f 



375 



376 



INDEX 



Duty, in Kant, 75 f; conflicts of, 
317f 

Education, state, 252; as voca- 
tion, 291f; for adults, 801f; 
moral, 302n. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 163 

Egoism, 220 

Elisha, the prophet, 61 

Emerson, estimate of, 27-29; 
Essay on Love, l64n 

Ends, proximate and ultimate, 
50-51 ; in Kant, 74, 89; instru- 
mental, 138, 166, 229f, 268; 
unattainable in finite world, 
149f, 158 ; hierarchy of, 363 

Enemies, 205; intellectual, 207n 

Erastianism, 342 

Ethical Culture, Society for, 58, 
346n; School, 58n, 276 

Ethics, as non-violation of per- 
sonality, 7, S5, 54; individual- 
ity of, 24; as science of ends, 
40, 50f ; and social reform, 48 ; 
relation to other subjects, QQ', 
Kantian, 73f ; an independent 
discipline, 84f, 132f ; energiz- 
ing quality of, 93, 101, 135n, 
221, 228, 274, SQS; contrast 
with physical science, 93, 99; 
its peculiar manifold, 109f, 
114f, 126, 132, 141; verifica- 
tion in, 112; and social struc- 
ture, 191 ; and empirical traits, 
212f, 223f, 242f ; the law of 
levitation, 222; as science of 
relations, 233; and industry, 
272f ; and art, 277f ; and na- 
tionality, S25f ; historical sys- 



tems of, 346; and worship, 
349, 352 
Evil, problem of, 32-34 ; immedi- 
ate reform, 49; contrasted with 
sin, 172f 

Family, as empirical group, 133, 
249f ; spiritual view of, 25 If 

Festivals, religious, 353 

Feudalism, 142 

Force, as ethical discipline, 356f ; 
and freedom, 366f 

Forgiveness, 202f 

Fouillee, Alfred, 209, 324 

Freedom, 148f, 300, 306, 366f 

Freud, 79 

Friendship, 234f 

Froebel, 295 

Frustration, in marriage, 62 f, 
235 ; in bereavement, 64 ; in in- 
tellectual ambition_, 65 f, 227; 
cosmic, 67; in social better- 
ment, 69; in achieving ethical 
uniqueness, 118; and ethical 
plan, 137, 140, 147, 150f ; mis- 
sion of, 152f, 165, 195, 365; in 
science, 265 ; in vocation, 269 ; 
final realization of, 356f 

"Functional Finalities," 106, 
lllf 

Galileo, 97n 

Gang Loyalty, 77 

George, Henry, 44 

Goethe, 67n, 176p, 198n, 220, 
243, 285 

God, idea of, 136, 139, 362; sub- 
mission to will of, 156; wor- 
ship, 350 



INDEX 



377 



Greek, art, l6n ; philosophy, 105 ; 
treatment of suiFering, 155, 
166; idea of evil, 172; social 
system, 190f; epic, 283; edu- 
cation, 299 

Grotius, 332 

Hague Conference, 326 

Happiness, 227f 

Harnack, Adolf, 39 

Hebrews, sex purity, 7 ; religion, 
14-26; as elect people, 19; 
their mission, 21 f; and prob- 
lem of evil, 33 

Hegel, 139, 343 

Helmholtz, 196, 267 

History, value of, 247n; ethical 
aim of, 275 f 

Humboldt, William von, 126 

Hume, 111 

Ilion, 283 
Imagination, 267 
Immortality, 139, l66f, 359 
Individual, the, 246, 250, 295, 

319f 
Industry, organization of, 271, 

274; representation of, 312 
Insanity, l6ln 
Intellect, 227 
Internationalism, 325f ; obstacles 

to, 332f ; organized, 338n 
Isaiah, 22 

Jerusalem, siege of, S3 

Jesus, as exemplar, 25 ; his teach- 
ing, 30-42 ; and the problem of 
evil, 33f; and socialism, 37; 
attitude toward sin, 204n, 205 



Jews, 347 

Justice, social, 194f ; commercial, 
215f ; ethical, 217; legal, 289 

Kant, individualistic ethics, 9; 
and holiness idea, 59 ; Critique 
of Ethical Ideal, 73f, 137f; 
his pre-occupation with phys- 
ical science, 84f, 88, 100, 133; 
doctrine of ends, 74, 80, 87, 
100; Critique of Pure Reason^ 
84, 95, 102; not a pure ration- 
alist, 95 f; a priori doctrine, 
111; doctrine of worth, 119; 
and God idea, 126f ; and on- 
tological argument, 129; on 
marriage, 257 

Keats, 282 

Labor, remuneration of, 193 

Lange, Albert, Die Arheiter- 
frage, 10; History of Ma- 
terialism, 11 

Law, 290, 307; international, 
332f; divine, 345; and free- 
dom, 367 

Lawyer, vocation of, 289 

Lear, King, 282 

Leibnitz, 196, 247n, 332 

Lessing, 150 

Life, right to, 179f 

Louis XIV, 316 

"Lycidas,'' 282 

Manifold, of time and space, 96; 
in physical science, 107f ; eth- 
ical, 109f, 132, 134, 141 

Marcus Aurelius, 120 



878 



INDEX 



Marriage, and happiness, 61 f; 
tabu notion of, 77; spiritual 
relation in, 163, 258f ; mono- 
gamic, 251, 254; infelicitous, 
257; state control of, 307 

Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, 44; 
type of socialism, 45 f 

Materialism, of middle class, 52 

Mayer, Robert, 196 

Mill, J. S., 368 

Mommsen, 276n 

Monasticism, 40 

Monotheism, 20f 

Moral Law, as worshipful, 10, 
12 ; obligation to obey, 75 ; uni- 
versality of, 177; and worship, 
350 

More, Sir Thomas, 205n 

Moses, 26, S55 

National Character, 324 ; sins of, 

330, 336f 
Nature, exploitation of, 186f 
Necessity, applied to ethics, 85 f; 

Kantian, 88 
Newton, 84, 94, 196 
Nietzsche, 47, 152, 214 
Non-resistance, doctrine of, 182 
Noumena, Kantian, 127n 
Numen, spiritual, 220, 224, 228, 

231 

(Edipus Rex, 173, 28 In 
Ontological Argument, 129f 
Ostwald, 94 

Pantheism, 8n 
Paul, St., 38 
Peace, spiritual, 360 



Pekin, 330 

personal Factor in Ethics, 3-6 

Personality, 197, 222, 247, 321 

Pestalozzi, 295 

Peters, Karl, 335 

Philistinism, 52 

Philosophy, monism and plural- 
ism, 110 

Plagiarism, 197 

Plato, transcendent vision of, 16; 
his idea of justice, 31; ethics 
of, 74, 120, 132; influence of, 
198n; and eugenics, 214; and 
art, 286; and the State, 305, 
313, 319 

Poverty, evils of, 44f ; relief of, 
51 

Pragmatism, 106n, 136n 

Prayer, 35 If 

Property, its rights, 185f ; as a 
social concept, 189 

Ptolemy, 105n 

Public Good, 314 

Punishment, its object, 176, 203; 
capital, 204 

Race Prejudice, 236n 
Ranke, 247n 
"Reality-producing functions," 

114f, 124n, 126, 130, 132, 265 
Religion, Types of, 363 
Religious Society, 341 f; its 

teaching, 343 f; organization, 

347f ; worship, 349f 
Repentance, 203f 
Representation, in State, 31 On, 

322; proportional, 322 
Reputation, right to, 196f 
Responsibility, definition, 173f; 



INDEX 



379 



for others' life, 180; for pov- 
erty and suffering, 183f 

Reverence, three-fold, 241 f, 250; 
in family, 253; in artist, 284f ; 
in education, 292; among na- 
tions, 324 

Reymond, Dubois, 128 

Rousseau, Confessions, 6; idea of 
State, 305 

Sch'ller, 285n 

School, 292 ; and home, 294 ; ob- 
jects of, 295f; prevocational, 
298; moral education in, 303; 
self-government in, 304 

Schopenhauer, 120, 131n 

Science, as vocation, 263f; and 
internationalism, 334 

Self-discipline, 362f 

Self-sacrifice, 212f 

Sermon on the Mount, 4, 198, S66 

Service, 226f 

Shelley, 282 

Sin, 171f, 202f 

Social reform, 48f ; fallacies of, 
53f, 268 ; spiritual view of, 56 ; 
its object, 261; various 
schemes of, 273; ethical pro- 
gram of, 275n 

Socialism, 11, 37, 43f, 56n, 196, 
271f;s274 

Socrates, 122 

Sophocles, 173 

Spencer, Herbert, 94 

Spinoza, 8 

Spiritual Nature, 148, 224, 231 

State, ethical conception of, 
305f ; sovereignty of, 308f ; or- 
ganization of, 31 Of; as law- 



maker, 313; duty towards, 
319; and individual, 3 19n; in- 
ternational relations, 326f; 
and religion, 342f 

Stephen, the Martyr, 38 

Stevenson, R. L., 208n, 21 In 

Stoicism, 154, 159 

Suffering, various attitudes 
toward, 154f ; ethical attitude, 
159f 

Sympathy, as ethical motive, 49f, 
99n, 156 

Tabus, 77, 179 

Tariff, 314, 315n 

Tasks of Life, 268 

Thomas a Kempis, 258 

Tolstoy, 184 

Trade, international, 334f ; slave, 

335 
Tyndal, 268 
Tyrrel, Father, 39, 150n 

Universe, spiritual, 125f, 134; 
last blessing of, 360 

University, ideal of, 298f ; Amer- 
ican, 300f 

Value, vs. Worth, 117n 

Vattel, 332 

Verification in ethics, 112, 118, 
135n 

Virtue, 211 

Vocation, influence on develop- 
ment, 58f; vs. occupation, 
260f ; an ethical classification, 
262f; practical, 270f ; educa- 
tional, 289f; represented in 
State, 31 Of, 322 



380 



INDEX 



Wages and wage-earners, 194;, 

215n, 216 
Waitz, Anthropologie, 209 
War, when justified, 182f 
Wealth, 51; stewardship of, 192 
Whole, ideal of, in ethics, lOOf, 

114f, 121 
Women, in State, Sll; in re- 
ligious societies, 348 
Wordsworth, 282 
Worship, religious, 349 
Worth, in human personality, 57> 



68, 70, 224n, 247; Kant's doc- 
trine of, 82f, 89f, 101 ; ethical 
justification of, 91 f^ 98n; at- 
tributed to man, 10 In, 102f, as 
member of ethical manifold, 
117, 119, 121 ; vs, value, 117n; 
homage to, 349, 360 



Zeno, 108 
Zionism, 24 
Zoroaster, 15 

(1) 



